The Hockey Mom Who Just Can’t Even

It’s been four weeks since we found out my older son’s team was being abandoned by the coach, and I am at the point now where I just can’t even…  We still don’t have a team, and Jamie has been turned down by three teams so far.  I thought he had been turned down by 4, but it just turns out they failed to include my email address when they sent out the “We’ve decided to have one more try out” email. So although that’s technically still an opportunity, the fact that they didn’t seem too concerned about making sure I got the notification doesn’t bode well, in my opinion. Someday, I’m going to look back on all this, and remember 2015 as the year that the ever-positive Susie Sunshine finally became soured on travel hockey. :/

On a much more positive note, I canned strawberry jam this weekend. It didn’t exactly start out as positive, though.  On top of the hockey stress, the fruit I got from the farmer’s market turned out to be terrible.  I’ve never had problems with the strawberries from my local guy before (usually they’re amazing!), but we’ve had so much rain, I can’t really fault the guy for his fruit, but I sure was pissed about spending money on fruit that had so much that had to be thrown away.  Besides the wasted money, it cost me a lot of wasted time in trying to remove the bad parts.

But that’s not all: my husband decided to have his dad and siblings over for Father’s Day. Normally, I love having family over, but not during strawberry canning weekend!! I put on a smile and did my best to act as though they weren’t in my way and making me frustrated, but at the end of the night, after they left, I came to realize that I had forgotten to put lemon juice in three of the four batches of jam I made while they were there…and I had no idea which finished jars were which. That meant I had to reprocess 40 jars of jam. Son of a bitch.

Sunday morning, I woke up frustrated, knowing I was far behind and feeling angry about all that crappy fruit that awaited me out the barn. After some internal debate, I roused both kids and told them we were going with me to the U-pick strawberry farm. JJ was enthusiastic, but Jamie need a little persuading, since he didn’t like being woken up and then immediately asked to get in the car. (That’s only acceptable for hockey, I guess. 🙂 )

Once we got there, though, both kids were quite helpful and pleasant. It took us about 45 minutes to pick the amount of strawberries we needed, plus another hour travel time, but in the end it was totally worth it. Not only was it cheap (averaged out to $1.89 per quart), but it was great being able to pick my own fruit, knowing that I wasn’t going to have any bad ones. And the kids had a great time!

I think next year I’m just going to have to take Friday off work and plan to head to the strawberry patch with the boys and get the fruit from there. It was definitely well worth the time and effort.  Picking strawberries was actually fun, and when all was said and done, I had 94 jars of strawberry jam.

Jamie set it all up for me, and I asked him to make sure my wine was in the picture, like last year, because I thought it was a fitting touch. I should have specified that I meant my wine GLASS, not all the wine we had I the house!!

After it was all done, I was tired and still a little cranky from everything that was going on, and I decided that I deserved a little treat. So, I whipped up a strawberry shortcake–a real one, not a fake one from Bisquick that I did last year. I forgot to take a picture, but suffice it to say that it was very tasty, especially when topped with lots of strawberries and some Cool Whip. It tasted so good, in fact, that I had three helpings. I knew that wasn’t a very good idea, but I was just so frustrated from everything going on that I just wanted to treat myself. Unfortunately, it wasn’t such a treat the next morning, my normal weigh-in day.

Yep. Up another 1.4. That’s the most I’ve weighed since before I made Lifetime. :(. What sucks is that I tracked all the food I ate all last week, including the chocolate I overdosed with on Thursday, the wine I drank all weekend (I measured every glass!), and even the three shortcakes (5 points each). If the program works the way it’s supposed to, where I’m allowed to actually use my 49 weekly points, I should’ve been fine. I still had 29 points left over. Huh, so much for that.

But wait, it gets worse.  It’s the last full week of the month, so you know what that means: I have to weigh in at Weight Watchers. In order to keep Lifetime status, I have to weigh in each month and be within two pounds of my goal weight, which is 129. I set that goal three years ago, when I was weighing in at 117-119. Back then, I figured I’d NEVER have to worry about losing my free eTools (the benefit of Lifetime membership).  Today I weighed in…

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. I can’t believe I gained 4 pounds in a month!!

The woman was so nice about it. She is always so positive when I weigh in every month, no matter the result, and she always tells me how great I look, and if I have a little gain, she always tells me not to worry.

Once again, she was very encouraging today, although it was clearly a bit tempered this time. She said she knew I’d be okay next month, and she offered me some options. As hard as it was to do, I chose to increase my goal weight. I can go up to 137 for my height, and that’s what I did. After I got my free eTools voucher and walked out to my car, it was hard not to cry. I NEVER thought I’d get to this point, but it’s especially frustrating because I HAVE been trying: I track everything, I run 20-25 miles a week, and I deny myself all kinds of treats and things I would love to have. Last week, while grocery shopping, I swear that every cookie and baked good was calling my name. But I ignored them ALL!

I’m really at a loss as to what to do, but this week, I decided a good start would be to eliminate all chocolate from my life. That’s a sad day, when I give up chocolate. I’ve also determined that I will have no wine until Saturday night, after my long run. I don’t know if it’ll help, though. I’m so frustrated, I’m actually at the point where I’m wondering if it’s time to try something OTHER than Weight Watchers.  I’m not sure what else there is to try, but it’s starting to feel like a change is in order.

We’ll see what happens next week. I won’t have any hockey news to report before next Tuesday at the earliest, but I sure hope I can have some better scale news. :/

Thanks for reading!