Zeo's Thoughts and Wanderings

Last month, I started musing about "seasonal offerings" for my store.  It's sometimes tricky to think of seasonally themed items, because a) I live in Arizona; it's already in the low 90's here, and b) I don't celebrate holidays, so I tend to forget when they are.  But this time, I actually thought, "Oh, hey, Easter's coming up soon...what about a set of mini lip balms in jellybean flavors?  Both spice jellybean and fruit jellybean?"  It took a little time to get all the flavings and tubes, but Monday, I set about to make 10 sets of fruit jellybean lip balms and 10 sets of spice jellybean lip balms.

( In Progress )

Coffee soap, in the mold.  I was pretty proud of this soap; it was made with double-brewed coffee instead of water, with coffee grounds mixed in the soap batter, and whole coffee beans embedded on the top.  It had almost no scent, though, when it finished, which is kind of okay.  The beans on top made it tricky to cut; after a few misfires trying to cut from the top (the blade would catch a bean and push it all the way through the soap, leaving a gouge through the bar), I ended up flipping the loaf over and cutting from the bottom.  I still had a lot of beans fall off as I cut and after, leading to several packages probably sounding like maracas when they arrived at their destination.  :-D

Coffee soap is said to be good for removing garlic and onion odors from hands.  I actually haven't tried that, and the entire batch sold within a week (I think, it sure seemed fast).  I need to make more; it's on the list for when I get more mango butter.

Wow, haven't posted here in over 2 years.  I just...haven't felt the need.  I kind of wandered over to Tumblr and just fell in.

So, a quick update: lost my job in July.  Haven't found a new one yet, but I have an Etsy shop, Zeo's Soaps and Sundries, where I sell handmade soaps, lip balms, bath salts, and soon, cuticle oil.  I'm also running a GoFundMe campaign, trying to get a little extra money to help bridge the gap on weeks where sales are slow.

This week is full of soapmaking.  I have 13 more 2-pound batches I want to make, and I keep running out of ingredients.  Today, I ran out of lye, which is somewhat essential to making soap.  I have enough mango butter for one more, maybe two more batches.  I have some money coming in, so I'll be able to restock those ingredients, but dang, it's a fine balancing act I'm walking.  Once I get those soaps made and listed, I can breathe a little.

So, that's what I've been up to of late.  Anyone miss me?

I was grumping to myself this morning about my recent inability to stick to the calorie budget.  This week, I've been ravenous by dinnertime, and even snacking at work.  I did some research, as it's period week, as to whether or not that affects metabolism.

Turns out, it does.  A few days before and during menstruation, a woman's metabolism ramps up anywhere from 5% to 20%.  That would explain this week.

Then I looked at my logs.  This is my eighth week logging my food.  The first four weeks, I had no problem staying under budget, ending the week 500 to 700 calories under the weekly limit.  Then, week five, I was 1454 over budget.  Week six, 1203.  Week seven, 1811.  So far this week, I'm 1279 over. 

It's not just the incremental decrease in the calorie limit from losing weight.  It's not just a rebellious attitude.  I figured out what else happened four weeks ago.  I went back on birth control pills.

It's entirely possible that the pills are affecting my appetite and metabolism.  Many women report weight gain after starting bcps.  It takes about three months for this particular pill to "settle in" when it comes to side effects, so for the next two months, I'm going to keep logging my food and trying to weigh weekly, but not be particularly over-worried if I can't keep to the budget without hunger pains, or if I gain a pound or more back.  This actually, timing wise, works out somewhat well.  I should be past the adjustment period starting in January.  January's always a good time to get back on track.

I've managed to keep logging my food for over a month, almost a month and a half.  I'm down 14.4 pounds.  I will admit, I don't log my weight if it goes up, and it did go up 2 pounds a few weeks back, but I've since lost those, plus a few more.

Having my calorie intake allowance drop when my weight drops is a bit unsettling, though I understand the reasoning.  When I started logging, I was allowed 1841 calories a day.  Now, 14 pounds later, it's at 1749, almost 100 calories less.  Despite being over-budget almost all last week, I still lost weight.  A coworker of mine is using LoseIt now, too, for one of her classes.  She was trying to figure out why my calorie allowance is so much higher than hers (1500s).  The simple answer is, I weigh more, probably 100 pounds or more.

A while back on Suits, there was a bit where Mike (young pretending-to-be-lawyer male) and Donna (legal secretary for the older male) were getting coffee.  He was confused as to why she'd get a skim-milk latte if she was getting whipped cream on it.  She told him, "BECAUSE I got the skim milk, I CAN HAVE the whipped cream."  He still didn't understand it, though it made sense to me.  Donna is by no means overweight, but the principle remains.  If she got both full-fat milk AND whipped cream, then there are more calories.  Getting skim milk gives her a little wiggle room for the treat of the whipped cream.  It's making balance.  For instance, this morning I'm having a large-ish Red Velvet hot chocolate with whipped cream, sausage gravy, and really really dense bread (mishap with the bread maker).  Breakfast is clocking in at 1294 of my 1749 calories, leaving me 455 calories for the rest of the day.  Given that one weekend day is usually spent napping, and it wasn't yesterday, breakfast will probably also count as lunch (also because of the time we're eating: it's after 10 now), I'll have an apple (90 calories) as a snack when I get up, and a salad (290 calories) for dinner, leaving me 75 calories under budget.

What the title says.  :-P  I've just read the first two books in what looks to be an ongoing series (book two just came out a few months ago).  They're classified as young adult, but hey, nothing wrong with YA fiction.

The first book in the series is The Search for WondLa.  The second is A Hero for WondLa.  The books start with Eva Nine, twelve years old, in Sanctuary, an underground complex.  She's been there her whole life, raised by the robot MUTHR.  She has food pellets and nutri-bars for meals, runs holo-simulations learning how to survive Outside, and relies on an Omnipod, a hand-held omniscient computer about the size and shape of a hand mirror, to help her with her lessons.  Being twelve, she's getting to the age where she has more questions than answers, and MUTHR is less-than-helpful with answers.  Eva found a code inside one of her dresser drawers which gave her unlimited access to the Sanctuary databases, and using a map of Sanctuary, found an abandoned passage.  There, she keeps her "secret stash:" toys, clothes, and other things she was supposed to have outgrown and gotten rid of, but wasn't ready to give up just yet.  One item stands out from the rest; one item that wasn't originally given to her by MUTHR: a piece of pasteboard with a picture of a robot, a child, and an adult.  They're smiling, happy.  The only text originally on the board was La, in ornate script; she later found another piece of it, with Wond in the same script.  She calls her picture "WondLa," and wants to know more about it.  How did it get there?  What does it mean? 

One day, Sanctuary is attacked.  With MUTHR's help, Eva flees to the surface...and finds it much, much different than her simulations.  Her Omnipod is near-useless in these conditions.  She's left wondering if this is even Earth, like she always thought. 

I don't want to go into too much more detail, and really, I can't go into much more without giving away some of the important plot points.  I can't talk about Hero for WondLa without totally spoiling Search for WondLa.  The books have lovely illustrations, and an interactive element: each book has three drawings you can scan (?) with a webcam to be taken to interactive features online--sort of a variation on the ever-increasing QR code.  Not having a webcam, I didn't bother scanning the drawings, so I don't know exactly what they do.

Overall, I liked them, and will wait somewhat-patiently for the next book in the series.  The author is Tony diTerlizzi, who also wrote The Spiderwick Chronicles.

So, LoseIt has a number of graphs and reports you can look at to see your eating habits and patterns.  Apparently, I don't like fruit.  Fruit very rarely shows up on my MyPlate report.  This is true; I don't care for a lot of fruits.  I basically like 2 types of apples, green grapes, and grapefruit.  I did have a salad for dinner, so I hit my vegetable quota for the day.  The main reason for the salad was so I could have one of Whole Foods' gluten-free chocolate cupcakes.  I just really needed it.  I haven't had a period since March, but it's been gearing up all week to start, and the PMS was just really, really bad today. 

Just my luck, I should be hitting my heavy flow day just in time for our 8th anniversary.  Whee.  :-P

So, one of the things with tracking calories, and I've noticed this before, but I always forget about it in between bouts, is that when I start paying attention to serving sizes, I'm always surprised by some of them. 

For instance, this morning, we had pancakes.  Matt made them, so I entered the recipe into LoseIt, then just adjusted the number of servings to be the number of pancakes made.  That was pretty straightforward.  The spread serving size was a tablespoon; that seemed generous enough for 3 pancakes.  The maple syrup (real maple syrup; I stopped using "maple-flavored" syrup years ago) had a serving size of a quarter-cup.  I didn't have a clean quarter-cup measure, so I used the eighth-cup measure...and one of those was more than enough syrup for 3 pancakes.

I remember back in 1999-2000-ish, trying to keep track of what I ate by using recommended serving sizes only.  I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and was amazed at, I think, the serving size of the jelly compared to the peanut butter.  I don't remember now which was bigger; I just rememeber a comically unbalanced sandwich.

So once more I board the fitness/weight loss train.  I'm going into this with no expectations other than, "I fully expect to fall off the wagon in 2 weeks time." 

I never posted about it here, but back in June, we came home from work one day to find the back door wide open and the house totally tossed.  We'd had a break-in.  They primarily stole small electronics: our cameras, the old laptop that didn't work so well, my DS, the Wii and games, some car speakers and an amp.  They also took 2 of my rings, family heirlooms.  Nothing was recovered, but we had renters' insurance.  Allstate has been nothing but good to us through everything. 

How does this relate to fitness/weight loss?  My primary exercise tool was WiiFit.  Interestingly enough, even though they stole the Wii, both remotes, both nunchucks, and the sensor, they didn't take the power cables or the Balance Board.  They also didn't take the actual WiiFit disc.  So, with the insurance and reimbursement, we replaced the Wii hardware.  I was grumpy, though, because that meant any of my previous progress with WiiFit was gone (and even more so when we lost Scamp, it meant his Mii was gone now, too).

I finally got around to remaking my Mii last night, though I couldn't find the same hair it had before.  That was fine; I switched it to a ponytail.  But I had to reset my profile on WiiFit.  Anything I'd unlocked before, I'm going to have to unlock again. 

In addition to the WiiFit, I downloaded an app to both my Kindle and my phone: LoseIt.  It's a food/exercise calorie tracking program which so far, seems easy enough to use.  I like being able to scan barcodes with my phone if the food's not in their database.  Still, I've had trouble keeping food journals in the past.  We'll see how long this lasts.  Like I said before, I'm not overly optomistic about this.  But, I did 2 rounds of Basic Step on WiiFit last night.  It's a start.