But when you knit lace, well, it always starts out just fine.

You have gorgeous yarn!  Pet it, it’s so soft!

Look at that progress!  I’m making lace!!!

OH MY GOD, I’M STUCK IN A BLACK HOLE IN THE NO-PROGRESS EVER ZONE!!!

This is about the time people start looking over your shoulder and asking you if you are knitting dryer lint.  Your knitting looks like wet dog ass.  You’re starting to look around wistfully at the sock knitters, who have knit 3 socks since you started.  There’s that brand new knitter who just started coming a month ago, and she’s already finished a sweater.  Stash yarn you haven’t thought about in years is calling out to you:  “Kniiiiitttt meeeee….I want to be a fancy haaaaat!  A haaaaaaaaaaatttt!!!!”

But you persevere.  Uhhh….well, maybe you take a really long break and knit that hat.  And some socks.  And a bunch of other lace projects.  BUT EVENTUALLY, you persevere.  And you pick it back up and you keep knitting and knitting and HEY that wasn’t so bad, because now you’re done, and now you have a pile of wet dog ass that’s no longer on the needles.

That is progress.

And now is when the magic happens.  Because that lump of wet dog ass looks NOTHING like the picture in the book.  NOTHING like the delicate, wafty, intricate lace that you had pictured in your mind when you started this journey.   Nothing about what you have just knit looks like it should be.

Until…

And the lace EXPLODES!!!

Even on the blocking wires, it’s hard to tell.  It’s a little too stretched, too cold looking.  Too…clinical.

It’s not until you take it off the wires and lift it up in your hands that your lace comes alive.

And it was all worth it.  Because YOU DID THIS.  And THIS…THIS IS AWESOME.

Myrtle Leaf Shawl from Victorian Lace Today. Knit out of Kidsilk Haze.

It’s a birthday gift for my mother.  Because I am a gooooood daughter.

And then it’s time to start planning the next lace…

After work, I decided to drive a little out of my way to stop at a produce stand and pick up some fresh fruit and veggies for the next week.  Because we are healthy eating people.

Upon arrival I start picking out all the yummy things we need – tomatoes!  mangos! (for slaw! minus the cashews!) peaches! cucumbers! watermelon!  Yes yes yes, bag them all for me, please.  And my total comes to $18, so I reach into my wallet and pull out my debit card.

Uhhh, our debit machine is out of order ma’am, but we’ll take a check.

A check?  What’s a check?  Who carries around a checkbook anymore?  Who under the age of 50, I mean.

I ask for the nearest ATM, and he points me across the street to a butcher’s market.  Promising I’ll be back for my produce, I hustle to the market looking for the ATM.

Which…is out of order.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME???

Taking pity on me, the manager said that he would ring me up using my card for whatever amount I needed and then give me cash.

How could I walk out of there empty handed (save for my cash) with that kind of customer service? Huh?  And we already have steaks in the freezer,  so what I ended up with was…

BACON

So THAT is why I came home with a big bag full of fresh, delicious produce, and a pile of thick cut bacony goodness.  WAS NOT MY FAULT!

I am a victim of circumstance.  Delicious, delicious circumstance.

*************

This shrimp is AWESOME.  TOO AWESOME FOR YOU!

But you should make it anyway.  Because?  IT IS AWESOME!  Do you need any more reason?  NO YOU DON’T!

Why am I yelling?  BECAUSE THE AWESOMENESS IS TOO MUCH FOR LOWERCASE LETTERS TO HANDLE!!!!

I swear, this is super easy and delicious.  I don’t even like cooking with shrimp!  But I’ve had this recipe bouncing around in my head for a while, based on some shrimp I saw at Costco, and some different recipes I looked up, and I had to give it a try.  Below is my standard accurate-ish recipe.  If you like things more exact,  you can go google yourself a recipe.

Cilantro Lime Shrimp OF AWESOMENESS

• 1-2 pounds of raw, tail on, deveined shrimp (you can buy them like this IF YOU’RE A SUCKER!  Do it yourself, it’s not that hard)
• 1/2 – 2/3 cup lime juice
• large handful of cilantro – destemmed and chopped
• 3 green onions (scallions) – chopped fine
• 2 tsp of salt -  it’s a marinade – you want salty
• 1/2 tsp-ish black pepper
• big pinch of red pepper flakes – more if you can HANDLE it
• 1/2 cup veg oil

First I par cooked the shrimp.  Some recipes went ceviche style, but that made me a little squeamish.  So I popped the shrimp in the steamer basket and steamed until it’s JUST pink.  BARELY.  In fact, some of the shrimps still had raw spots on them.  So steam or boil your shrimp for just a minute or two, then pop into an ice bath.  Mix the rest of the ingredients together and pour into a lidded container (TAKE THE LID OFF FIRST, IDIOT).  Dump in the shrimp, put the lid on, and kind of swirl and gently shake the shrimp to coat.  DON’T SHAKE TOO HARD!  This recipe is NOT called “Cilantro Lime Bruised Shrimp Pieces.”  Pop it in the fridge.  Before you go to bed, give it another gentle  shake.  Before  you go to work in the morning, another shake.  Every few hours, if you can.  But if not, don’t freak.

By dinner time, you will have perfectly cooked, limey cilantro-ey, spicy shrimp of AWESOMENESS.  You can probably do something fancy, like make a salad of microgreens and heirloom tomatoes, or some shit.  Or you can do what Kevin and I did which was eat them STRAIGHT out of the container like the feral brutes we are.

I only bought a pound of shrimp because I didn’t want to waste the money if this recipe sucked.  BUT IT DOES NOT SUCK.  Next time I’m buying a few pounds, and then just keep stuffing my face with shrimp for the week.  MINE!  MIIIINE!!!!!

Make this!  You won’t regret it!

I want to go outside.

Sadie, it is really hot out.  You don’t want to go out there.

I hate you.  My life is filled with darkness and sadness.  You never let me do anything fun.

Oh, alright!

Hooooraaaaaaay!  I am outside!!!!

Oh…you’re not coming out, too?

Hey, it’s hot out here!  Let me in before I call PETA on your ass!

Thank you.  Now.  Give me a treat.

I want to go outside.  My life is full of misery and woe.

Dammit, Sadie…

shaved the dog…

spun some yarn…

and then knitted it

finished two small shawls

and rocked them

So what is going on in my life.  I left one job and started a new one.  One I like even better, even though it’s only temporary (for now – if you can send some “YOU CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT THIS WOMAN” mojo towards the general region of Duluth, GA, I’d really appreciate it).  That was a major upheaval and one I hadn’t expected -  but who does?  As usual, I’m not going to blog any specifics, just that I’m still in the pharmaceutical industry, doing very different work that I did in my last job, sciency enough to scratch that itch, but not so much that I’m banging my head against a lab bench all day.  Perfect!

What else?  Ohhh..the d word.  Crap.

Diet.

I could do a whole separate blog post on my body and my relationship with it (and maybe I will!).  It’s complicated, and yet it’s not.  I am new to Fat Acceptance and the ideas of HAES (Health At Every Size), and yet it also feels like something I’ve come to naturally.  Because I’ve been fat my whole life.  BUT, and I must stress this – I haven’t been on diets my whole life.  Because even when I was young, I realized that diets do not work.  For me.  Because anyone who stands there and tells me YOU CAN NEVER EAT ANOTHER CHEESECAKE AGAIN, FATTY! is going to get laughed out of the room.  Fuck you, I can eat whatever I want.  And I gradually came to a point in my life where I didn’t care what other people thought.  I had friends who cared for me, boyfriend-fiance-husband who loved me, clothes that fit me, a roof over my head…etc etc etc – I was blessed in so many ways, that I didn’t care what the scale said.

Check that – I still don’t care what the scale says.

Getting ahead of myself.  Anyway…

Since Kev and I have been together, our weights have been creeping up.  It bothered him more than it bothered me.  What started to bother me were other things.  When I turned 30, my blood pressure went up.  Pretty much overnight, I went from 120/80 LIKE CLOCKWORK, to much higher, scarier numbers.  And because of spotty insurance coverage over the next several years *INSERT RANT ABOUT THE STATE OF HEALTH CARE AND INSURANCE IN THE US HERE AND FUCK YOU IF YOU’VE NEVER HAD TO MAKE A CHOICE BETWEEN GETTING A CAT SCAN AND PAYING YOUR MORTGAGE THAT MONTH, YOU INSUFFERABLE ASSHOLES* it took almost 3 years before I found a doctor who prescribed the right cocktail of pills to bring my blood pressure down to reasonable levels.

And so I plugged along, in my early thirties, already taking blood pressure pills (for full disclosure – there’s a HUGE family history of high blood pressure in my family, so this really wasn’t a huge shock for me), cholesterol meds, and the other pills that made me a healthy, happy girl.

ASIDE: As you can tell, I am not one of those people who avoids modern pharmaceuticals.  I learned from a very early age that medicine that doctors give you GENERALLY make you feel better.  You can disagree with me (don’t care!), but I learned that lesson after  severe asthma kept me in and out of the hospital throughout my childhood.  I WILL TAKE WHATEVER YOU GIVE ME, JUST PLEASE SAY I WILL BE ABLE TO BREATH AGAIN AND GO HOME!!!!  I take medicines promptly and cheerfully, and if they don’t work, I go back to the doctor and ask for something else.

BUT THEN…then I had my last check up.  Standard stuff, ending with a trip down to the lab for some bloodwork.  By that evening, I had the results online (soooo convenient and fast, these people) and there were my numbers.  TSH – normalish, cholesterol – still a little high, blood sugar – BORDERLINE SCARY.

Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit.

Type 2 diabetes is not something I want to mess with.  Not now, not ever.  Yes, there are medicines that can help control it.  But they are scary.  With nasty side effects.  And scary prognosis.  My immediate reaction was so rare for me…how can I fix this without going on drugs? I’d have to get a handle on my blood sugar.  Using diet.

*weep*

Fortunately, Kevin had gotten his hands on some books about Atkins and South Beach diets.  EYEROLL I KNOW, but whatev.  And for months he’d been filling me in on what carbohydrates do to your body, how they spike your blood sugar, how they make you crave MOAR SUGARS!  And my response had always been “oh how INTERESTING!  Please cut me another piece of baguette to dip into my giant bowl of pasta.”

But the test results were enough to weaken my anti-diet resolve just a little bit, so I decided to give it a try.  WE decided to give it a try.

I am not going to try to sell you on this diet.  Because in many ways, it does suck.  Going out to eat sucks – it’s difficult to find affordable places to eat out that don’t involve giant bowls of noodles or crap piled on bread.  Grocery bills are a little shocking – carbs are cheap.  Protein is expensive.

We have stuck to it, though.   And I have learned a lot over the past several months.

1. it’s important to me that I’m doing this because I WANT to, not because I HAVE to, or feel any pressure to do so by any outside influence.

2. I can still enjoy plenty of carbs on special occasions.

3. special occasions occur whenever I say they occur.  for example, “on thursday nights.”

4. All this time, I thought I had been “eating intuitively,” a big part of HAES.  I was not – I was eating what I was CRAVING, not what my body wanted.  When I eliminated the OMG NEED SUGAR NOW!1!!!111! cravings I was constantly having, I was able to actually listen to my body.  “I would like some chicken and broccoli for dinner.”  Why yes, body, certainly!

5. Sometimes I still crave stuff.  Sometimes I give in.  (see point 3).

6. I have new food sensitivities.  This is the only really bad part of this experience.  Suddenly, I am learning I can’t have certain things.  I’m certain some of it is lack-of-gall bladder related – like my reaction to a big spinach salad I had for lunch one day.  Some of it, I’m not sure what’s going on.  I had been enjoying the atkins shakes (shut up – this shit is made with CREAM and CHOCOLATE and some artificial sweeteners and you CAN’T TELL me that doesn’t sound at least partly good, and in the morning when I need something fast on my way out the door to work, this stuff was pretty great) until last week when I had a BAD gut reaction to one and actually had to leave work because I felt so awful.  I still don’t know what happened – experiments since have proven that it was the shake.  Dammit. I am not certain what these are all about, and I’m planning on discussing it with my doctor at my next visit.

7. I am losing weight.  I’m using weight loss as an indicator that I’m doing the low-carb thing correctly.  I’ve lost 26 pounds, am almost at my pre-wedding weight, and I’ve hit a plateau and I’m OK with that right now.  I went out and bought me some pants that fit.  (Because I’m also a big believer in getting rid of clothes that no longer fit me – I have no “this current weight” clothes left in my closet).  It’s crazy to think how much of our weight gain over the past few years was just from being lazy about cooking (“Hey, let’s have pasta for dinner AGAIN because it’s easy and cheap and deeeeelicious!”)

8. I am eating lots of bacon.  ’nuff said.

I am never going to be thin.  I don’t want to be thin – I have NEVER been thin.  That more than anything indicates to me that a healthy body weight for me is NOT going to be found in the “normal area” of a doctor’s chart.  What matters to me is that I feel better (I do – it’s amazing what eliminating those grouchy low blood sugar times will do for a person), I’m healthy, and I’m not miserable.

I’ll be heading back to the doctor to get my blood sugar rechecked next month.  And if it’s all been for naught, and my blood sugar is still high and I have to go on medicines, well…I will deal with that then.

I will end on a bloggy note: I am not planning on turning this into a ::*throws up in mouth a little*:: DIET BLOG.  I do not endorse any particular lifestyle or life choices for anyone else but ME. And GOD KNOWS there are already too many places on the internet where that shit can be discussed ad nauseum. I may mention it from time to time, but that’s because this is MY BLOG about MY LIFE. I’ve struggled with this a little, because part of me feels like I’m “betraying the movement” by doing this.  But this is MY life, MY deal – and the choices I make about my body are mine alone.  Just like the choices you make about yours are yours alone.  And if you go to the doctor and get similar test results as mine and your reaction is completely different, then that’s OK, too.

I am not an activist.  While weight has become an EXTREMELY political thing recently, there are plenty of other blogs and other bloggers out there FAR more eloquent than I am, who use their voice to discuss The Issues.  They do a much better job of fighting and arguing for your right to be whatever size you are than I ever could.  I can, and will,  only speak for me.

I will end with a gratuitous doggy picture.

HAHAHA!

OK, so.  Just some pictures.

My mom visited:

Oh wait, I didn’t take any pictures.  It was mostly us shopping – at the mall, in Helen, GA, at the outlets…

Stitches South!  Fun and uneventful.  Perfect!

I got a hair cut (FINALLY):

And I’ve been doing a lot of knitting:

My model works for dog biscuits.

Depending on how things go for me over the next couple of weeks, I may be getting A LOT more time to knit very soon.  *siiiiigh*  Not.  Ideal.

Woooo!  Thanks Bloggess!!!  I am in fact not dead.   I swearz it!  I’ve been busy.  Doing…stuff.

I don’t know…STUFF!  Knitting, twittering, obsessively watching the olympics…

OH MY GOD, there’s nothing ON!  Where is the downhill?  Where is the speed skating?  WHERE IS CURLING???  I CAN’T GO ON WITHOUT THEM!!!!

I do not have a problem.

In lieu of entertaining content, how about some semi-interesting pictures?

I got a cool new bag.  You are totes jealous.  I love that it’s my work bag but also secretly a knitting bag.  With an Ugly Doll!

I pulled my arrow lace shawl out of hibernation.  Maybe I’ll even finish it while it’s still cold outside, so I can wear it!

Sadie and I visited Grace!  Her cats were skeptical.  Here, Sadie is thinking “I sense an evil presence…”

I had a double matrixectomy!!!

Sorry you had to see that.  Biscuit?

Kev: What’s a twink?

ESC: you know, the sterotypical gay guy you see on tv…floating around…hellloooooo…you look FABuloooouuuus!

Kev: oh

ESC: let’s go SHOPPING!!

Kev:  *laughs* OK, I got it.

ESC:  And then there’s bears.

Kev: Bears.

ESC: yeah, kind of big burly guys.  Like, if you were gay, you’d be a bear.

Kev: *turns to me, puts his hand on his hip* I can float around JUST FINE, thankyouverymuch!

ESC: HA!  I’m blogging that.