Oreos, goldfish crackers and suicidal thoughts

I am not in a good place. The past few days have been filled with little sleep and lots of coughing/hacking/wheezing. This cruddy cold has really taken a toll on me. Last night I slept from 8-10 and then was up until 3:30 AM coughing/throwing up mucous and contemplating death. There’s nothing scarier than being so full of pain from sickness that I begin to think of ways out of LIFE. It is irrational, and in the light of day the anger/fear/complete exhaustion with the current situation, is gone…but those hours that I laid in bed, coughing and thinking of all the ways I could off myself is scary. I know that Boof was lying right next to me, and I believe I would have woken him up if I had gone beyond thinking to action (like trying to take a bunch of sleeping pills), so I believe I was safe, but it is scary the depths of my mind.

I think I should refrain from watching news shows (such as the story of Mindy McCready’s suicide yesterday) before I go to bed. I think the emotions of news stories crawl inside me and get mixed up with my own feelings. I am worried that my sickness is going to be bronchitis because of my asthma, and am hopeful that I won’t have to begin using inhalers again. yogic breathing has controlled it for over 7 years, but this feels so crappy that I would welcome the shaky albuterol feeling.

Part of my exhaustion is due to a lack of nutrition in the past few days. Being sick has decreased my appetite for anything other than goldfish crackers and oreos. Which basically sums up the past week of eating, even before I was sick. Something happened in my quest toward dairy-free and veganish eating., and I can’t quite explain what. But my momentum toward trying new foods and packing healthy salad lunches with Israeli couscous and garbanzo beans and olives, went back to my old habits of simply eating snacks all day and letting my blood sugar get so low it crashes and I get crabby and can’t think through a simple task like picking something for dinner.

While I’ve maintained my mostly-dairy free diet, it isn’t with enthusiasm or even mindful awareness. And the choices of dairy or nothing has tended toward nothing, which has left me zombie-like. I can’t seem to regulate my emotions and begin to re-pick healthy choices that will leave me full of energy. What I’ve mostly eaten is oreos (vegan) and goldfish crackers (not). It is this strange metaphor of my life boiled down into two little snacks. I also realize that I make these choices as if I were 5 years old, and can’t seem to figure out how to make adult eating choices, let alone figure out what the hell to feed my child beyond tortellini with red sauce.

A season of new: photography skills & healthy eating

Yesterday I had the privilege of attending a photography workshop that Boof had purchased on Groupon for me for Christmas. While geared more toward those with fancy-pants DSLR or point & shoot with full manual functions, I still got a lot out of it. Since I love photography it got me inspired to play around with the settings that I DO have on my camera. One drawback was that most of the people in the class were parents and he didn’t talk much about shooting in low light (indoors) with moving subjects (kiddos), because all of his talk on low light was about using these cool reflector gadgets and extra light flashes, which is SO not practical for a mom of a 1 year old. I’m chasing him down, and have zero time to put a gadgety light box up. A class covering that would have been sweet!

In other news: I’m starving. Well, not like African children starving, but still, I feel like I am going to DIE. That feeling comes in waves, though, and apparently it’s pretty common during a dairy elimination diet. I guess dairy has some sort of naturally produced stuff that acts like morphine/opiods, which makes us happy and not like we want to cry/tear our hair out/hit people (which might be how I’ve been feeling the past 24 hours). I tried my couch-5k run today and only managed 1 mile (though physically I felt okay) and almost started sobbing, so I went back inside (because nobody wants to be sobbing, while running in their neighborhood).

I was pretty proud of myself for making an awesome breakfast this morning. I’ve realized I’m going to have to eat practically non-stop to curb the dairy-craving-demon, so I tanked up this morning with a certified humane egg omelette with kale and nasty vegan cheese. The smell of the “cheese” was terrible, but it tasted okay when it finally melted. And I drank a coconut milk/raspberry/kale smoothie that tasted like…dirt. Sigh. I’m going to have to get more tools in my toolbelt if I’m going to make this change sustainable!

But, the longer I go, the more resolve I have (even if I’m blubbering), because today I learned it takes 10lbs of milk to make 1lb of cheese. And, that cheese uses calf stomach (rennet) to make it all thick and coagulated. So they separate a cow from her calf, the calf is sent to slaughter (barely strong enough to walk) and they combine the milk from the cow with the dead calf’s stomach. While it may not go exactly like that, it’s the gist that counts, and I just can’t do it! Though I’m now saying that I am “limiting” dairy, instead of “dairy free” because I will set myself up for failure if I think that I will never, under any circumstances, eat dairy again. Ya know?

Talk to me! Anybody do an elimination diet of any type? What were your reasonings? How long did it take for you to feel…normal?