Other Folks on the Path

 Horror Writing Prompt no. 2130: preacher man

Good Morning, you Beautiful People!

Today is about errands, housekeeping, and laundering the sheets. The housekeeping should be quick, as I've been maintaining the daily tidies. I also cleaned the bathrooms (except mopping the floors -- I'll do that today) yesterday when I was grabbing the towels for their wash load. 

My head is in a good place, and I'm making better food decisions.  I've adjusted the FAA plan to include a starch exchange with lunch. I just don't feel full without that component in a meal, so I added it. I also moved my dairy around. This is what my adjusted plan looks like:

Breakfast 
1 protein
1 starch
1 fruit
coffee or tea

Lunch
1 protein
1 starch
2 veg
1 dairy

Dinner
1 protein
1 starch
2 veg

Dessert/Snack
1 fruit
1 dairy

I can live with eating this way.  I generally use my fat exchange in my lunch and dinner. Sometimes it's in the cooking process of an item, other times it's as salad dressing. Since I added the starch component to lunch, I've reduced the serving size of starch to 2/3 cup instead of 1 cup. So I'm still having 2 cups of whole grains and/or starchy veg. Note on that starchy veg: I know that peas and corn are supposed to fall into this category, but I still count them as veg, due to upbringing. What I use as starchy veg is primarily potatoes. I don't like eating 2/3 cup of peas, so it makes more sense to me to make them a complimentary part of a 1 c serving of mixed veg. Does that make sense?

Anyway, this is what I'm working with now. I did the nutritional analysis on this approach, and it looks good:

Calories: ~1,300–1,380 kcal
Protein: ~100–115 g
Carbs: ~140–165 g
Fat: ~35–45 g
Fiber: ~24–30 g 

It's actually lower in calories than I thought it would be, so I'll probably just not worry about being a bit more liberal about the fats.

I'm not trying to create a "perfect diet," I'm trying to create a template to make it easy to make healthy choices. To avoid turning this into an obsession, I'll check in on this matter in a couple of weeks and let you know how I'm doing.

I hope each of you find something beautiful in your day, and as always, thank you for being here!

 Haiku Horror Writing Prompt no. 1697: boneless

 Good Morning, You Beautiful People!

I had a crappy night sleep last night (it was my own misdoing -- I made the mistake of bringing my phone up to my bedroom), mostly because I started watching shorts on YouTube. I know that doesn't work for me, and yet, there I was, taking until 3am to realize that I needed to put the damn phone down. My screen time has been lousy lately, but that was ridiculous. I need to go back to charging my phone in my office.

I've been doing a lot of work of restructuring my days in terms of what I expect of my AM routine and my PM routine. I'm good with the morning practice for the most part, it's the evening routine that I keep sabotaging. I have my laptop set up to turn itself off at 9:30pm, and it did. But what did I do? I turned it back on, to finish "what I was working on." Not cool. Especially since "what I was working on" was shopping. I was shopping for needful things, but honestly, that totally could have waited until today.

I think I need to give myself a reward for turning off the electronics at a decent hour. And maybe stay off the laptop after dinner, except to watch movies (not YouTube!). Mostly, I need to respect the parameters I set for myself, right? As my therapist said, my "inner teenager" has been ornery lately. She's right. And I mentioned orneriness first, so it was cool. I haven't been doing my puzzles and podcasts for a while...maybe I need to bring that back? Or maybe find a new quiet time activity...maybe I need something fresh? I need to ponder that one. I'm open to suggestions, if you folks have any ideas on that front.

The other thing I'm focusing on is food. Yesterday was a pretty good day. I did choose to have a sandwich (a Reuben) and chips at lunch, so that wasn't on plan, but it wasn't like the sandwich led to a binge and I didn't even eat all the chips (but I did eat all the sandwich!), so I'm going to let that slide, and carry on. Dinner went as planned, my yogurt and fruit "dessert" went as planned, and breakfast this morning went as planned, as did yesterday's breakfast. So four out of five eating opportunities went as planned, so that's a B, right? I'm cool with a B. Shoot, maybe I should grade myself more often when it comes to this stuff.

I hope you find something beautiful in your day, and as always, thank you for being here. 

 Good Afternoon, my Beautiful Friends!

The morning got away from me a bit today, but not in a bad. I'm trying to set and integrate a new morning and evening routine, as the old system was no longer working for me (gotta love ADHD!). It was just in time for my self-prescribed quarterly review, so all is well. In addition on working on new things, I also got my hair cut, ran to the store for a few items that I couldn't get at Costco, and watched a movie (Strawberry Mansion...very trippy, very much a low budget vibe, not everybody's cup of tea, but I quite enjoyed it). When I'm done writing this, I have some laundry to put away and should take Ted for a walk. I already got my poem a day written, and I even exercised (it was shifted to earlier in the morning routine, and yeah, that made a difference).

I am definitely feeling like myself again. As with every year (so far) I survived the time change from EST to DST. It just takes me a bit.

I hope that you find something beautiful in your day, and as always, thank you for being here. 

Good Morning, you Beautiful People!

It's a gray day here, but not in a downer sort of way. I have my list for Costco, one errand from CVS, and my Costco Rewards check at hand, so errands will be accomplished this morning. When I'm done here, I'll take a shower, throw the laundry in the dryer, and then take care of those errands. It's also garbage day, so I'll deep clean the fridge as I stock up. I know that everybody says to do it before, but I'm better at seeing the task through when it's paired with stocking up.

After that? I think those are the only obligations. I might watch Frankenstein. Or I might read the book I picked up from the used bookstore -- Eater of Ghosts. Time will tell.

I hope you find something beautiful in your day, and as always, thank you for being here! 

Good Morning you Beautiful People!

Doing my best to check in while it is still morning...I have 8 minutes to compose this. ;~)

It's that time of year when one receives their Costco Rewards check (if they have the Costco credit card), so it is time to do my annual "let's try shopping for groceries at Costco" trip. Throughout the year, I use the card for gas and incidental spending, so sometimes, that adds up. I might be able to get two weeks of groceries out of this, but I'll have to be careful of not buying too much at once. So I'm giving myself a budget, and using ChatGPT to plan it out.

I feel a little guilty about that, but it's going to be so much faster than me bouncing back and forth between the Costco website to check on prices and my meal planning notes. I live near an area that has an ever growing footprint of processing centers, and we are starting to see that they really do impact the local climate. The area in which most of these centers are located is definitely creating it's own micro-climate zone which regularly has higher temperatures than the surrounding areas. Our local weather guy was going to do a thing to try to debunk that idea, but when he saw the data, he said he would have to that project on hold, as he wanted to do more research on the subject, because he was surprised to see data that indicated the area in question did seem to operate in a heat bubble. And then there was no further story, because even local news can be swept under the rug. Does that sound too conspiratorial? I dunno. Even if I'm being paranoid, I don't make a habit of using AI and I feel a bit weird choosing it now.

And that is your unplanned trip into how my brain thinks sometimes. And it is now 12:06, so I hope you have a beautiful afternoon, and as always, thank you for being here! 

 Haiku Horror Writing Prompt no. 1685: tableaux

 Horror Writing Prompt no. 2113: flames