We made it through the first month

It's almost been 30 days since I said goodbye to my last career.  More importantly, it has been over a month since we'd been to Costco.  I mentioned in my last blog that we had to streamline our lives, quite a bit.  I'd say we've been fairly successful, despite a few rough patches.  We set a goal for our total budget for our groceries with only one trip to Costco a month.  This being the first month, we estimated how much meat we would need to last us the month and that was the majority of our purchase on that trip.

I then made a 30 day meal plan.  At first, this challenge gave me a rash for a few days.  How the heck do you plan 30 days of meals.  Thank God, I finally realized that I was completely over thinking this and I found a simpler way to think about it.  I divided up the days of the week with general meals, according to our schedule.  So our weeks went something like this: Sunday-chicken dinner (cause its easy to throw a whole chicken in the crock pot and then there's some broth to use for other recipes later in the week), Monday-Steak w/ a fresh vegetable, Tuesday-Comfort Food, Wednesday-Seafood, Thursday-Experimental Ethnic Food, Friday-Stew, chili or soup (that way we'd have left over to eat on Saturday when we'd be playing), Saturday-Grill night.  So I take these general themes and then just plan a more specific menu on a weekly basis.

The surprising part to me was the vegetables.  I planned on going to farmer's markets and then planning my recipes for the week.  But it was difficult to make it to the farmer's markets a couple of times because of my schedule.  So I had to go to Big Save.  Sadly, vegetables and fruits are kind of pricey and that took a huge chunk out of the budget.  We're looking into signing up with a farmer's co-op, where you pay a flat rate and you get a box of fresh stuff, whatever they have in season.  It would end up being much cheaper.

The awesome thing was that we grossly overestimated our meat supply.  The freezer is loaded up about half way, still.

But then about a week ago, I started watching the movie, "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead", while I rode the stationary bike. I'm not advocating a juice diet and I think there's more to get out of this movie than that.  It really made me think hard about our consumption of meat and proteins.  We really eat a lot of food and we're not hunter's and gatherers, anymore.  We don't need that much meat in our diets, it doesn't have to be in every meal.  And guess what, this saves us money.

So again, we went to Costco, our one big monthly trip to Costco.  We bought no meat.  We bought vegetables and nuts.  I bought stuff that I could stretch into bigger things, like Javy's snacks-organic sugar and coconut oil and organic chocolate chips.  Carrots and Sweet Potatoes, I can make stews that I can freeze and make them last a long time.  Because we didn't have to buy meat, we splurged on organic, cage-free eggs.  We'll see how this month goes, I love having a stocked kitchen.

I do recommend the movie, though, it was really inspirational and the main guy, Joe Cross is really handsome.  A lot of people still want to know how I lost all my weight and I still get compliments.  I kind of clam up, because I really don't like all the attention.  But from this movie, I see how he inspired one person and then that one person ended up inspiring many more people.  I see how I need to be more vocal.  And my message is, just start moving, even if its only 2 minutes.  Just keep pushing yourself more.  The confidence you gain will make you want to do more, even change your eating habits because you'll want to keep feeling good.

And on another happy note-we've noticed great progress in Javy, lately.  He's been moving himself across the floor, twisting and moving his body, like its nothing, and trying to verbalize more.  I'm going to work on getting some video of him for a future post.  I want everyone to see what he can do.  I have nothing to back this up, but I can't help but think that it may be because he doesn't eat processed foods, anymore.  It's been a few months since I've bought him anything that was loaded with preservatives and food coloring.  And that was exactly the reason that I did start making his snacks and limiting processed foods-to see if it would help his brain function better.  Hmmmm, could be.

If I had a trillion, kazillion dollars.....

I would build a big wheelchair accessible playground on the side of my house, just like Kamalani bridge.  It would be custom made for Javy with original artwork, plenty of sensory areas and at the end there would be a water feature to play in.  But on the very top there would be an adults only, cocktail bar for stargazing and early morning coffee drinking, sunrise watching.   

I would send my mom to MIT to get her engineering degree, since that is what she should be doing.  Then I would send her on a cruise around the world with Tom Selleck and David Caruso.

I would build a helicopter pad on top of our house and get my helicopter pilot's license so that I could fly just over the mountain and Javy could go surfing anytime he wanted.  Things like schedules would never get in the way of such an important thing.

Hoku Foods, Ishihara and Sueoka's would be the only grocery stores that we would shop at.

We would eat at Wrangler's every Friday night.

We would travel the world, on Virgin Airlines, and hike around all kinds of cool places because I would buy Javy one of those fancy off-roading strollers for big kids.

Who needs a trillion, kazillion dollars?  This could all come true even without it.

And Now For Something Completely Different........

Now on to the topic that's been stewing in my head for a few weeks now, before it boils down to nothing and another year's gone by.  After 16.5 years, I have resigned from my old employer and moved on to something, well, completely different.  I haven't really been able to talk about it much, just to people who were close to me.  But my next venture has been on my mind for quite some time.  I wanted to reach 20 years, just because....  It's 20 years, a good round number, whereas 16.5 sounds a little broken (and I really only missed the half year mark by 7 days.), like I gave up, or something.  My last day was on September 30, I thought that was appropriate, especially with a pending government shutdown (ahem).  Anyway, I digress.  I didn't exactly give up, life just kind of kicked me in the buttocks, and then lined itself up for me.  Really!  Sometimes failures are good things because they point you in the right direction of what you do want.  

Enough with the philosophizing, you might be saying.  I knew what I wanted, I just didn't know how to go about taking the next step towards it.  I wanted to be an occupational therapist.  At first, I thought I wanted to be a physical therapist, somebody who could help Javy walk.  But somebody told me one day that I needed to be a life coach.  And I was like, really that's an occupational therapist, they help with life skills and rehabilitating people to perform at their highest level.  I want to do that.  Occupational therapists don't necessarily work in an office, they can go where they are needed.  Flexibility, just what I need, especially when Javy is older and a young adult.  

So now, I went from being a steadily employed civil servant (third generation, I might add) to a Home Health Aide, going to school to be a Certified Nursing Assistant and a Classroom Aide for Headstart.  It makes perfect sense,right?  Not really, no one was more surprised than me to know that would be my next path.  Trust me, it's going to work and I really enjoy both my jobs.  I get to hang out with my two most favorite people-the little ones and the old ones.  And I'm really learning a lot about Javy in between.  In a couple of years, I'm going to apply for the Kinesiology Program at the University of Hawaii and I'll have the right background to get in.  Oh, and I'm off when Javy is out of school because Headstart follows the public school calendar.  

I guess, I'll be blogging a little more about frugality, because we're streamlining our life, a pretty good bit.  I haven't felt this free since I learned how to ride a bike.  

I trust that its all going to work out because since I've been Javy's Mama, things always do.  I gave up my dream to be an FBI Agent because being a mom was more important.  I did get to work at one of my dream jobs for a few years, but the satisfaction of that never quite overcame the desire to do the best for Javy.  That desire brought us to Kauai.  I will never regret anything in my past or say, "Should've, Could've, Would've."  I had so many great experiences and made some great friends working at the airport.  Javy may never have become a big wave surfer, if I hadn't been working at the airport. 

Dream on, my friends, dream on....

My First Attempt at Recipe Writing

Okay, I made something this am and I just have to share.  It came from my own head, but it was inspired by a former co-worker of mine.  Some of y'all may have heard me mention the Pancake Omelet that I made one day in an effort to make a gluten free pancake while conserving the all too expensive rice flour.  This was much better.  My co-worker suggested that you can also take peanut butter, eggs and bananas and make pancakes.  I'm trying to be grain free that means no rice, corn or wheat, pretty much just whole foods.  And I wanted something besides eggs and sausage (which I make homemade).  This is what I came up with and it has to be my favorite things now.

First, I mixed two eggs and about 2 Tablespoons of Coconut oil together really well.  Then I add some unrefined coconut sugar and a dash of vanilla, mixed all of that really well.  I added about 2 Tablespoons of peanut butter.  I used the all natural kind from Costco, the one with just peanuts, no sugar, no added crappy stuff, the one my mom hates.  I even added about a handful of chocolate chips, the organic ones from Costco.  I heated up my skillet and slicked it up with some coconut oil, cooked the batter like regular pancakes.  I was so happy that it actually worked and I couldn't even tell that it had no kind of flour.  I topped it with organic honey and a pat of butter.  It fueled me up for my morning walk with the dogs and believe me, you need a lot of energy when you take a short legged dog and long legged dog for a walk, together.

Deep Thoughts with Jack Handey...

Yet again, this is not the topic that I have been mulling over in my head.  But its prominence has pushed the other topic out of the way...  For now....  

It has dawned on me why I have been stuck with my weight loss, teetering between 174 and 178, since July.  It occurred to me in an early morning epiphany.  It jolted me from a dead sleep, even.  It has nothing to do with my diet or exercise, actually.  I forgot to keep accepting myself.  I've become impatient and focused too much on my dress size instead of my wholeness.  I've even found myself feeling "fat".   

I had to remind myself that the first thing that I did when I got my motivation to change my lifestyle was to accept myself in all my glory of 263 pounds.  The pressure immediately left me.  I was already awesome, I just made small steps to be more awesome.  I was beautiful at 263 pounds, I'm still beautiful at 176 (that's what I was this morning).  I will continue to make steps in the right direction towards my total wholeness.  

As proof of my growth, my friend even took a picture of ME that I actually like.

I love how dorky I am!  :)

The Early Bird Special

A couple of weeks ago, Javy's teacher asked about why Javy seems to have a hard time swallowing and gets choked up.  She asked if he'd ever had a doctor say that he needed to be on a special diet.  I kind of shrugged it off, because this had been a concern of ours when he was younger.  His speech therapist at the time had recommended that he have a swallow test.  That's when they take an X-Ray of his throat while he's swallowing some food.  His speech therapist and pediatrician were present and they said everything looked fine, he swallows normal.  We accommodated his tendency to swallow food whole by just making sure that his food was cut really small so he wouldn't choke.  Life went on.

Until his teacher brought it up, again.  Because I live a drama free life and am open to all possibilities, I accepted that the teacher's concerns might be valid and this issue may need to be readdressed.  In other words, I didn't freak out.  I told the teacher that the person to talk to about this would be a speech language pathologist and I know an excellent one.  But the teacher said that she'd just bring it up with the school's new speech therapist, who I had yet to meet.

A couple of days later, Javy's crack team of educational professionals and his home team, met up for his annual IEP meeting.  It was there that we met his new speech therapist and I like her.  She was right on this whole swallow thing.  She seemed to be geeking out on it and I love it when specialists geek out about my son's conditions.  In my experience that usually means that they're going to follow through until they solve the problem.  And then I usually get to geek out on it, too.  Staying up all night, Googling stuff.  It's a vicious cycle.

Anyway, she explained that the way Javy's mouth is shaped, he has a hard time manipulating the food with his tongue so the food gets swallowed before its chewed properly.  At this time, the light bulb went off in my head!  Ta Da!  It's because his palate is small.  That's been one of the observations made by the geneticists since Javy has been seeing a geneticist-narrow palate.  I asked the speech therapists if its possible that as Javy has grown, it's just gotten worse, creating this new concern.  I had noticed it, but I contributed it to Javy laughing uncontrollably and getting silly when I was trying to feed him.  It was a point of frustration for me.

The ST agreed to do an evaluation on him, but in the mean time she gave me a few things to think about.  Feed him softer foods at night, because its probably very tiring for him.  (I had never thought that eating could be tiring, but it made sense)  And also eating dinner earlier.  I have no problems with this because I grew up at grandparent's house and grandma sometimes had dinner on the table as early as 4:30pm.

Yesterday, I actually got a house call from the ST, because she lives down the street from us and that's just how we roll in Hawaii.  (Awesome!)  She gave me a name for Javy's swallowing disorder-dysphagia.  I've been trying to geek out on it but I feel like I have ADD right now.  (I got glutened the other night, handling dog food of all things.)  I'm impressed that I'm even able to write this, I tried last night, but couldn't get it to flow.  There's a lot of stuff about dysphagia, and I need to wait for the ST's report to figure out what's best for Javy.

It's just another reminder that we can never get too comfortable in Javyland.  We'll see you at the buffet.  

Grace!

I just want to follow up a little bit on my last post, "I'm in his World Now."  I, actually, have a couple of other topics brewing in my head that I was going to sit and write about, but this came to the forefront of my mind.  And since I don't like to think too much about what I write about, I'm just going to go with the flow and let me heart do the typing.  But just expect a great influx of blog posts in the near future, because there are changes happening in Javyland, even right now.

I'm very excited about all the possibilities that are going to occur and also, what I will learn from them. One of the lessons that I've learned just over the last week, is that I've got a lot to learn.  Hey, its the first step.  This week, I've learned a lot about Javy through the eyes of an older person.  I'm not talking about their 60's or 70's but a person approaching the century mark.  Like Javy, their body or their mind doesn't function 100%.  But they still deserve respect.  Their bodies and their minds are still their own and we have to give them the time and space to do what they need or want to do.

So I'm coming to terms with exactly what my role is in Javy's life.  Yes, I'm Javy's parent.  Most parents get to train their child in the way they should go and then send them off to a life of their own.  That's not how its going to be for us.  I think it would be a very boring life for both of us, if I just tried to fit Javy into my boring life of work and whatever I consider to be fun.  I've decided to follow his life and what he considers to be fun and important.  I honestly believe that's why I was put on this earth.  Hopefully, from our experiences, I will be able to educate and bring that world to other people's understanding so that we can all give and receive a little grace. Ahhhhh, such great relief, I finally have a vocation.