I am continuing to try to drink down some chia seeds or hemp hearts each day, For My (Peri-)Menopausal Health. I am continuing to feel as if there must be a better way to consume them (as far as I can tell, all the good ways are incompatible with keto). And yet: I DO succeed in getting myself on the outside of the seeds/hearts each time, and the main sacrifice is that I need to drink a bunch of water to wash them down; and I am supposed to be drinking a bunch of water with them anyway, so. Success! Triumph!
I don’t know if the seeds/hearts are improving my health, or how to tell. In so many cases, Nutritional Scripture must be taken On Faith. Fortunately, I am someone who enjoys Taking Pills, like when I have a 10-day course of antibiotics or whatever, and Food Rites can scratch that itch: I swish down my Nutritious Fiber, with its accompanying Striving and Very Mild Suffering, and I feel the happiness/satisfaction of having Taken My Medicine.
Long-time readers have noted that I did not talk about Mother’s Day this year. I am happy to report that it’s because Mother’s Day went well. There were doughnuts at breakfast, by my request; the line at the doughnut shop was reportedly LONG, which was pleasing to me: all those other mothers, receiving doughnuts too! For dinner, Paul made lasagna and rolls from scratch, after consulting with me well ahead of time to see if that was what I wanted. We watched a movie of my choice (The Hundred-Foot Journey); I try to choose something that no one except me is enthusiastic about, but that I think they WILL enjoy. William and Edward each bought me chocolates. Rob sent me an email. Elizabeth made me an embroidery of our cats. Henry bought me a plastic HORSE, like an 8-inch plastic horse of the sort girls my age used to collect along with Barbie dolls (I had neither plastic horses nor Barbie dolls as a child, but played with them at friends’ houses); and when I said no one had ever given me a horse before, he was pleased and said he’d suspected as much. He said the horse’s name is Nutmeg.
Well. Really, a success in every way. Sometimes it feels as if things cannot change, and that we cannot expect them to change, and in fact we are specifically TOLD not to expect things to change; but then sometimes they DO change, and what are we supposed to do with THAT.
Would you like to report in about your Mother’s Day? Please don’t feel that this is no longer a place to vent. I have to say, this is the downside of things going well this year: I actually do look forward to bonding with everyone else who has an upsetting Mother’s Day—but NOW look what’s happened.
I too had a great mother’s day! My take-away from your mother’s day blogs is that it’s important that my spouse know what my expectations are. At this point my expectation is a heartfelt card from him and the children (toddler+baby). He delivered! And included a chocolate bar and a cute lidded bowl to put my lunch in for work! He did have to work, but I had a lovely morning with the children and then my mom came over in the afternoon and we had tea and pastries and went to the park. And then my spouse brought home falafel for supper! It was great.
Do you eat any keto yogurt? You could add chia seeds or hemp hearts to them. I’ve also seen people sprinkle hemp hearts on avocado.
My Mother’s Day was good. My daughter had just graduated from high school the day before so lots of family in town. I was worried but we ordered lunch from a restaurant so no work for me. And I got a lovely card that was the perfect mix of sweet and funny (and cats). As a side note: we ordered our food the day before. On Sunday morning there was a power outage that messed up people’s online orders at that particular restaurant. Ours was unaffected but judging from our town facebook page several families’ orders did NOT go through and there was a lot of angry drama.
For hemp hearts, I don’t mind just putting a tablespoonful in my mouth, chewing it up, and then swishing and drinking some water. They have almost a creamy texture as you chew and only a mildly funky taste, at least to me.
Oh, I will try this!
I had a really lovely Mother’s Day. My only child, an adult daughter, lives 7 hours away but was in our area for the weekend and we drove to the city to spend the day with her and her boyfriend. I did all the planning, but it was FINE. I was met at her hotel with flowers and a lovely card, and then we all went to the Arboretum with a picnic that I packed, and later we all had dinner together.
I’m so glad that your day exceeded your expectations!
I had a wonderful day. My kids are older teens. So even though my husband told me he wanted a divorce a couple weeks before and was therefore relieved of any effort in that department, it seems I raised children who made me breakfast, got me doughnuts, and bought me small, amusing little gifts. And then spent the majority of the day in my company. So, really? What more can I want but the cheerful consideration of my loved ones?
May the wheel of karma roll right across your husband’s face on Father’s Day.
so say we all
Did someone suggest chia seed pudding to you? I think it’s keto- made with coconut milk in a can, not the “drink with breakfast” type. If you mentioned you hate this type of coconut milk I apologize!
Chia pudding can be made with any kind of milk, or water, or a blend of milk + water! Obviously creaminess and tastiness will vary, depending. At a ratio of 4:1 milk/water to chia seeds, the result the next day is a fairly thick pudding. Stir really well when you first mix it up, then give it a good stir again a few hours later and let it finish setting up.
You can make a little batch and keep it in the fridge and just mix a couple of spoonfuls with yogurt or whatever. It’s much nicer to blend into smoothies etc after it’s been softened up as a pudding.
I’m so glad about your Mother’s Day!!! I was thinking of you quite a lot
Oh Swistle, I have been regularly (and anxiously) checking my feed to see if you had posted about Mother’s Day. I can’t tell you how delighted I am to read that it went well. I am very pleased that your people have lifted their game.
My Mother’s Day was very nice and low key, homemade pancakes for breakfast (at my request), a delightfully quirky gift basket of items selected and purchased by Miss 12 and dinner of my choosing prepared by not me.
My birthday is inconveniently a couple of weeks beforehand and birthdays are IMPORTANT in my family, so that tends to be a bigger celebration.
My husband was away visiting his family for
Mothers Day, he did call me and asked how my day was going but since he wasn’t here the kids (who are 8 and 10) had only given me their school made cards. They were lovely but if I’m honest I was thinking – couldn’t he have planned just a little gift in advance and tell my oldest to give it to me on the day? Trying to look at the positive side he did give me flowers on our anniversary despite us usually only going to dinner together and for my birthday which was also recently he gave me thoughtful gifts. The downside is when I joked about Father’s Day being less pressure on me then he said “oh no!” And I’m not sure if he was joking or not…
We had a lunch picnic with my mom and a dinner picnic at home – which was so nice given the temperamental PNW spring weather, but my Mother’s Day did begin at 2:30am with my toddler throwing up all over her room.
Mother’s Day happened to coincide with my 40th birthday. Saturday my husband took me out to dinner and to do some birthday shopping, and then Sunday our church put together a little luncheon thing for all the women and my family kept the rest of the day pretty low key—listened to a book together as a family and I got to pick what we ate for dinner, which is always something we really don’t have any other day of the year. Nothing too fancy, but it was pleasant.
It genuinely never occurred to me that some people could enjoy taking pills, I’m a bit jealous (I am neutral on pill taking, but also mostly annoyed at how often I forget to take what I should).
I’m so happy for your successful Mother’s Day, Swistle.
My husband has always been quite thoughtful on Mother’s Day – any issues I have are typically with having to see HIS mother and/or socialize with his whole family. I like my in-laws just fine, but devoting the afternoon to them certainly isn’t what I would choose to spend My Special Day doing, if we were actually to treat the day as one in which I get to do whatever I want. Lo and behold, one of my kids was sick, so I got to skip the family gathering and stay home doing nothing while said child binged TV.
I also asked my spouse on a date the Friday before Mother’s Day, something we haven’t done in a good long while, and we went to see The Fall Guy, a movie that felt targeted directly to me and my interests (those being well-choreographed on-screen fights, absolutely ridiculous romantic action/adventure movies a la Romancing the Stone and The Mummy, and Ryan Gosling). So it felt like a bit of an extra Mother’s Day gift, in a way.
Glad to hear your Mother’s Day went well! A horse named Nutmeg! I’m not a mom and my mom died the day before Mother’s Day several years ago and it can be a tough day for me. However, this year my husband went by himself to see his mother freeing me her not helpful comments telling me my mom is better off dead because it ended her suffering. I had a wonderful day by myself, drawing by a lake.
Oh sooboo, can I just say how sorry I am that your MIL would ever say such a thing! How awful. I’m so sorry about your mother.
It’s lovely to see my daughter, who now has her own spending money, thoughtfully work out a gift for me. She succeeded. My husband also came through with a sweet gift. It was a complicated day in other ways. We received some bad news that a classmate of my daughter had died by suicide. We did a lot of crying on Mother’s Day, but it was together as a family.
NUTMEG!!!
I was hoping you had a good Mother’s Day! I spent mine in the car, driving nine hours from my parents’ house to our home. But when I got home my older son was making dinner – a vegan dinner! – and my younger son had bought me a handy little tool for weeding in my garden, so I was happy.
Omg an embroidery of your cats, can we see it?
You know, I figured it must have gone well or so very badly you couldn’t bring yourself to write about it for a while. I’m glad you had a nice Mother’s Day since it’s been such sticking point in the past. That must have been very gratifying.
As lesbian moms, when our kids were little, it was always kind of hard figuring out how we could BOTH get a break, unless we took turns and that was a lot like regular life. As they got older, it was less of an issue, but the fact that Sunday is Beth’s cooking night remained a problem. Either she’d cook, or I’d take on an extra cooking shift on Mother’s Day or we’d get takeout that she paid for (being the main earner in the family). None of the options seemed right.
I can’t believe it took me until this year to realize that THE KIDS (who are 18 and 23) could cook dinner. Each one has a cooking night every week– they are both good cooks. This year they both had afternoon/evening plans, but they worked together to prep dinner in the morning and Beth put the finishing touches on it. She did still grocery shop that day, though. Oh, and the younger one made us breakfast and the kids got us gifts, but they’ve been doing that all along (with help when they were little). Beth and i also went for a walk together in a local botanical garden.
My Mother’s Day was fine, even though my son went off to play pickleball with his girlfriend and her mom. He DID invite me along, which was nice. He did not invite me along later when they all went to a movie, but that’s fine, I probably would have said no because I was having a nice time gardening.
I am also recently on the fiber train and I will say that Metamucil is working well for me. I just had to find the right time to take it, which for me is around 10-11 am. It makes me too full to drink it before dinner. I thought I would hate the taste, but it’s actually kind of like Tang. I don’t hate it at all. Very tolerable.
Henry’s gift of the little horse is just so touching. What a thoughtful and loving present! I’m so glad your Mother’s Day was better; it sounds like the people in your house Got The Message.
I’ve read that acacia powder is keto-friendly, and if you mix it with water there is no taste. I’ve found that mixing it in and then waiting a bit allows it to dissolve completely.
Lately I have been working on getting enough sleep, and I feel like I am taking my medicine by all the structure that it takes, I feel like I am basically getting ready for bed as soon as I get home from work. I am enjoying the ritual of it, the ORDER it takes to just get 7 measly hours of sleep!
I worked all day on Mothers Day, I had to be there at 11 and I didn’t get finished until after 9:00. My husband and I went out and got a bite to eat, which was nice. I am a Known Jerk but I don’t like to do stuff with my kids on Mothers Day, I feel so scarred from when they were little. I have No Expectations of the day and I told my husband, in no circumstances should he get me anything. I get more and more resentful of made up holidays. I’m glad I work in a restaurant now that is more dinner and less brunch because for years I worked on Mothers Day and had to watch mothers of little kids working so hard at this brunch that was for them! Like everything else, for me it gets better as my kids get older. This year my 16 year old drove to Starbucks and got me my favorite drink so I could take it with me to work. She wrote “Happy Mothers Day” with a heart on the lid and every time I took a sip, I thought about how great they are.
Hooray for a successful Mother’s Day! I had lasagna made for me too! It’s pretty much the only thing my husband makes if dinner is up to him. The best part for me, though, was that he had to make dinner not because of Mother’s Day, but because I was busy playing a concert with the community orchestra I play with sometimes. I’m happy to have music back in my life and it was nice to make the long drive home knowing that the concert had gone well and there would be lasagna and wine when I got back.
I was definitely thinking of you, Swistle! Older kids are really the best and I’m glad yours delivered this year.
Mine made me dinner! A recipe they’d never made, but they worked together and didn’t even fight, and it was delicious. They bought me sweet cards and little gifts – a new coffee mug, a new BOOK that’s exactly the right genre, and husband got me a necklace. I asked if we could please go to the bookstore just to wander, and so the kids took me there. So nice! No one even begged to buy anything!
Now granted, I did still have to go grocery shopping, and I cleaned house allll day Saturday so I was in a bit of (back) pain after that. But all in all, a Win.
Happy to hear that you had an enjoyable Mother’s Day! Mine was not great – to the point that I ended up crying in bed at 5pm. Which sounds terribly dramatic and silly at this point. Basic issue was that I didn’t feel like my kids (13,16 and 18) wanted to spend time with me. Tried for a bit of a re-do on the following Friday – with the two things I mostly wanted: #1, photo of me with all 3 kids together. (Didn’t happen Sunday because oldest kid had other planned commitment and middle kid had work.) #2 – all eat dinner together, something I didn’t cook. Dinner didn’t work out that day either because middle kid had a headache and so was napping that off. Photo taking wasn’t even a pleasant experience either. Was sad on the day and on the re-do attempt but am over it now. Will have low expectations for next year.
My mother’s day didn’t exist. That said I’m “only” a stepmom – but I normally see my stepson for part of the day. This year he was away with his mom – so I didn’t get a call, a card or anything. Twas expected.
Husband asked me what I wanted for Mother’s day a few days before. I asked for a plant, or garden stuff. Easy to get. Got nothing. No acknowledgement from him on the day either – despite him previously asking, he pretended they day didn’t exist.
I did get a text from my own mom, and a whole bunch of mom friends, which was nice.
It can get frustrating when I do all the ‘mom’ things, 50% of the time (exact same amount of Mom-ing that biomom does – we’re 50/50 custody) except because I didn’t actually birth the kid, I never count. I want to point out that lots of Mom’s don’t actually birth their kids.
Awww, sorry you weren’t acknowledged! You definitely deserved something amazing, birth mom or not, for all the mothering. ❤️
My husband worked on Mothers Day, which was fine. He got me nothing. My kids got me nothing. My 9 year old told me to make sure to get all my cleaning and laundry done so I could relax the next day. When I told him I had to work the next day he said I should just relax on my lunch break. So that was cool.
Where is the pic of Nutmeg?!
Lol, I am sort of embarrassed at how I kept predicting the end of sentences wrong. You were happy the doughnut place line was long because GOOD, they had to stand there for a long time? No, of course, all those other mothers getting doughnuts, obviously. You tried to pick a movie no one else was interested in because FUCK THEM, THAT’S WHY, oh, but that they would enjoy, yes, naturally, very good then.
Mother’s Day was fine, but I was off. My husband brought flowers and my daughter made her usual gorgeous card and my parents came over for dinner, but I felt weird and sad and tired. I think we might need to do a brunch or something next year, because dinner just gives me time to brood all day if I’m already brood-ish. So glad yours was good though!
My mind went to the same, incorrect end-of-sentence predictions lol
I think this is both funny and delightful, and would FAR RATHER hang out with people who end the sentences your way!!