Special

special vs. Special
I'm having a bit of a splurge day in terms of food consumption. What this means is I've let myself have one square of Ghirardelli chocolate and two cups of tea. Ahhhh, this is the life. Actually, I'm doing very well at sticking to a much healthier diet in the past few weeks. I let myself have both desserts at dinner last night, but managed to stop myself from going back for seconds of either dessert. I'll take improvement where I can get it.

I've also made a bit of a mental shift. It may not stick permanently, however, I'm pleased with the shift as of now. In the past, I've looked at any time we go out to eat as a special(ish) occasion. It's date night? Ah well, I can have a box of candy. What? We're going to Pastini for dinner? Strawberry lemonade it is - after all, it's a special occasion! Turns out when you have special occasions constantly, they're not so special anymore. And they're bad for you. So I've decided that going to the movies is not Special. We're fortunate enough to get enough date nights that I need to stop thinking of date night as Special. It's just another day in our weekly routine. I don't get to go wild during our routine days. Also not Special: a day where Avery is at school, then at RHG's for the afternoon ... my day off, if you will. I get this almost every week. Very rarely does  it not happen. Yes, I'm totally lucky and that is totally special compared to a lot of SAHMs. However, it's not Special. I still have to do my walk on those days and I can't sit around eating chocolate and sugar all day as I've been known to do in the past.

What is Special is a fine dining dinner out with friends or with D. D and I don't do fine dining all that much anymore, mostly because we prefer to use our date nights for movie viewing versus food consumption. Since I don't do it more than once a month or so, I figure it can still be Special.

What is Special is going to a dinner at a friend's house, like we did last night.

What is Special is a major holiday meal.

What is Special is a birthday or a baby shower or something that doesn't come around every week or two.

And what will be Special is Felipe coming to cook for us at the casa during our girls' weekend in Mexico! Yes, ladies, I finally got around to emailing him to coordinate. Let's hope I haven't blown it and he's available.

Headaches & Queasiness
As I type this, I'm miraculously crappy-feeling free. I've not had a strict restriction of added sugar today, but in line with the mental shift that today is not Special for me, I've not binged, either. I am not sure added sugar is the main contributor to the problems I've been having lately, though I definitely acknowledge that cutting back significantly on added sugar benefits me in many ways (more energy, losing weight, etc).

Saturday night, after our movie on date night, I was feeling horribly. We stopped to get some Odwalla protein drink (which for the life of me I cannot figure out why that often makes me feel better, but it does). After coming out of the store, I cried about this situation for really the first time. Sometimes it occurs to me that I really don't cry that much. This is an odd realization because Megan without antidepressants is (often) a daily crier. I went so many years where I should have been on medication, that I just forgot that it's not "normal" to cry 1-5 times per day. Anyway, now that I don't cry easily, I sometimes find it frustrating when I can't cry. This situation has been building and building in frustration. Feeling like shit sucks. After my little crying jaunt of 10 minutes or so on Saturday, I feel like I have a renewed ability to deal with this and get through it. That I will just keep trying different things, or different doctors, until I figure out what's wrong. Hell, maybe I just had a recurrent tension headache from not crying for several months (I jest, obviously).