little win

Well, despite how much I enjoyed spending the evening with our church's teenagers (Articulate, Mafia, Would-You-Rather...?, flashlight tag, Coraline) the food part was extremely difficult. As you know, I arrived loaded with fresh fruits. However, the others came loaded with home-made cookies, fifteens, Pringles, Malteaser cake, marshmallows, jellies...and the rest. It was a complete stimulus overload. We laid the food out so that the healthy food sat at one end of the table and the junk at the other, and I kept myself firmly on one side of the room. I had told myself in advance that if I wanted a treat it wasn't forbidden. However I felt when confronted with such vast quantities of sweets that I couldn't choose sensibly what one treat might be. I kept putting off that choice until eventually it was 3a.m. and we were heading for bed. Interestingly, the kids devoured the fresh fruit - in particular the mandarins, strawberries and melon. I really hadn't brought enough. I'm not sure they would have particularly noticed if the table wasn't laden with junk. As a teenager, I certainly would have noticed, but then in my mind the best thing to look forward to about such an event would probably have been the food.

There were about thirty minutes at the sleepover of genuine existential angst about the food. I don't know if you've ever experienced such a thing. It's like a despairing torment; a sense of being unable to be happy and unable to cope with being unhappy - as though (as Tim Keller talks about) we do not fit right with the reality around us. I texted the husband unit to explain how insane I was feeling and he prayed for me. I distracted myself by leading a complicated game and although the urge to binge lingered until the moment I fell asleep, it was a little easier.

I, a chronic insomniac, woke in the morning to discover that I had slept for six hours through general chatter and noise, and now felt alert and refreshed. We set about cooking breakfast for the kids. The leftovers had all been tidied into tins and tupperware and were sitting on the kitchen counter-top. I was unaware of them. Breakfast was pancakes and bacon. I knew a pancake or two would not sustain me for the day, so I nicked a couple of eggs and made myself a slightly more nutritious breakfast. The treats were invisible to me and I felt bright as a button. I enjoyed the last few hours with the kids, and headed home to relax for the day. In some ways this felt like a small victory - not because I had avoided junk food...but because I had eventually come to terms with not eating it.

I took a two hour afternoon nap today. It was so silent and restful and our room was filled with a golden light. We've just had dinner and are planning a nostalgia-movie evening - he has picked Jurassic Park, and I've gone for High Fidelity (will attempt to keep the Cusack-drooling to a minimum).

Breakfast: 2 eggs, 1 slice bacon, 1 slice brown toast, tea.

Snack: 2 mandarins

Lunch: Half a bowl of banana pumpkin oats with 1tsp peanut butter (I couldn't finish it!)

Dinner: Striploin steak with onions, mushrooms, home-made potato wedges and pepper sauce. Half a can of Bulmers.

No exercise at all. Will have to get my blimpy butt out and about tomorrow for a bit of fresh air. Thanks for reading, waifs!