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April 4 Menu Plan

Monday ~

Breakfast - ;( Milky way and Dr. Pepper…..Overslept

Dinner - Cornbread and beans pie

Tuesday ~

Breakfast – Natchitoches Meat Pies

Dinner – Omelets and biscuits

Wednesday~

Breakfast – PW Cinnamon Toast

Dinner - Fish sticks and roasted potatoes

Thursday ~ Breakfast- Banana muffins

Dinner - Hamburger steak, rice and gravy

Friday~

Breakfast - Cinnamon rolls

Dinner - Pizza and movie night

Saturday ~

Breakfast – Hope I sleep thru it

Lunch – Sandwiches, chips Stir Fry Chicken and rice

Sunday

Breakfast – Pancakes and sausage

Dinner ~ Pot Roast with carrots and onions, PW mashed potatoes, lemon cupcakes

Not Me

I did not stay up past 3 am in a Blog Induced Trance. I know how important is is to start Monday off right. I would never get so lost in all of the great ideas in blog land.

I did not wake up at 7am when our routine says we have to be packed in car at 7:10.

I did not wait until Monday morning to get gas. I would hate to start the morning out with a tank on flat empty.

I did not have a Milky Way and Dr. Pepper for breakfast and I would never give my child the same gas station food.

I did not get a text from coworker, in office, that she pulled a muscle in her back and was taking a muscle relaxer to see if it helped. She would let us know if she would be able to come in later.....

My other coworker, nurse, did not get a call from her daycare because her son's diaper rash was so bad that they wanted her to take him to the doctor at 9AM.

I did not have to work essentially the entire office with a frazzled receptionist and and frazzled dr.

Doctor was already frazzled thinking I passed a stomach virus on to him. I would never have called in because I coughed all night and couldn't sleep. I wouldn't have misled them by adding that I was throwing up. . .

Its not even noon yet . . . . I need a Vacation!

Kitchen Fun

Bill Zeller's Goodbye

Bill Zeller

It is not ofthen that I am left speechless by something I have read. I was completely floored by the extraordinary final words written byPrinceton graduate student named Bill Zeller who took his life at the age of 27.

Zeller left a lengthy and astonishing note explaining his decision to commit suicide. He wrote in detail about the “darkness” that surrounded him and his inability to love other people, especially his uber-religious family. What plagued Zeller beyond recovery, though, was having been repeatedly molested as a child, a fact he never shared with anyone. That’s what’s so striking about Zeller’s suicide note – you can’t help but think while reading it that if he’d only confessed his experience to someone – anyone – a friend, a doctor, a therapist – he might still be alive today.

Typically I would quote passages from a piece like Zeller’s goodbye, but it is his expressed wish that the letter be reproduced only in its entirety, so I’ve posted it below. He wanted his voice to be heard.

I have the urge to declare my sanity and justify my actions, but I assume I’ll never be able to convince anyone that this was the right decision. Maybe it’s true that anyone who does this is insane by definition, but I can at least explain my reasoning. I considered not writing any of this because of how personal it is, but I like tying up loose ends and don’t want people to wonder why I did this. Since I’ve never spoken to anyone about what happened to me, people would likely draw the wrong conclusions.

My first memories as a child are of being raped, repeatedly. This has affected every aspect of my life. This darkness, which is the only way I can describe it, has followed me like a fog, but at times intensified and overwhelmed me, usually triggered by a distinct situation. In kindergarten I couldn’t use the bathroom and would stand petrified whenever I needed to, which started a trend of awkward and unexplained social behavior. The damage that was done to my body still prevents me from using the bathroom normally, but now it’s less of a physical impediment than a daily reminder of what was done to me.

This darkness followed me as I grew up. I remember spending hours playing with legos, having my world consist of me and a box of cold, plastic blocks. Just waiting for everything to end. It’s the same thing I do now, but instead of legos it’s surfing the web or reading or listening to a baseball game. Most of my life has been spent feeling dead inside, waiting for my body to catch up.

At times growing up I would feel inconsolable rage, but I never connected this to what happened until puberty. I was able to keep the darkness at bay for a few hours at a time by doing things that required intense concentration, but it would always come back. Programming appealed to me for this reason. I was never particularly fond of computers or mathematically inclined, but the temporary peace it would provide was like a drug. But the darkness always returned and built up something like a tolerance, because programming has become less and less of a refuge.

The darkness is with me nearly every time I wake up. I feel like a grime is covering me. I feel like I’m trapped in a contaminated body that no amount of washing will clean. Whenever I think about what happened I feel manic and itchy and can’t concentrate on anything else. It manifests itself in hours of eating or staying up for days at a time or sleeping for sixteen hours straight or week long programming binges or constantly going to the gym. I’m exhausted from feeling like this every hour of every day.

Three to four nights a week I have nightmares about what happened. It makes me avoid sleep and constantly tired, because sleeping with what feels like hours of nightmares is not restful. I wake up sweaty and furious. I’m reminded every morning of what was done to me and the control it has over my life.

I’ve never been able to stop thinking about what happened to me and this hampered my social interactions. I would be angry and lost in thought and then be interrupted by someone saying “Hi” or making small talk, unable to understand why I seemed cold and distant. I walked around, viewing the outside world from a distant portal behind my eyes, unable to perform normal human niceties. I wondered what it would be like to take to other people without what happened constantly on my mind, and I wondered if other people had similar experiences that they were better able to mask.

Alcohol was also something that let me escape the darkness. It would always find me later, though, and it was always angry that I managed to escape and it made me pay. Many of the irresponsible things I did were the result of the darkness. Obviously I’m responsible for every decision and action, including this one, but there are reasons why things happen the way they do.

Alcohol and other drugs provided a way to ignore the realities of my situation. It was easy to spend the night drinking and forget that I had no future to look forward to. I never liked what alcohol did to me, but it was better than facing my existence honestly. I haven’t touched alcohol or any other drug in over seven months (and no drugs or alcohol will be involved when I do this) and this has forced me to evaluate my life in an honest and clear way. There’s no future here. The darkness will always be with me.

I used to think if I solved some problem or achieved some goal, maybe he would leave. It was comforting to identify tangible issues as the source of my problems instead of something that I’ll never be able to change. I thought that if I got into to a good college, or a good grad school, or lost weight, or went to the gym nearly every day for a year, or created programs that millions of people used, or spent a summer or California or New York or published papers that I was proud of, then maybe I would feel some peace and not be constantly haunted and unhappy. But nothing I did made a dent in how depressed I was on a daily basis and nothing was in any way fulfilling. I’m not sure why I ever thought that would change anything.

I didn’t realize how deep a hold he had on me and my life until my first relationship. I stupidly assumed that no matter how the darkness affected me personally, my romantic relationships would somehow be separated and protected. Growing up I viewed my future relationships as a possible escape from this thing that haunts me every day, but I began to realize how entangled it was with every aspect of my life and how it is never going to release me. Instead of being an escape, relationships and romantic contact with other people only intensified everything about him that I couldn’t stand. I will never be able to have a relationship in which he is not the focus, affecting every aspect of my romantic interactions.

Relationships always started out fine and I’d be able to ignore him for a few weeks. But as we got closer emotionally the darkness would return and every night it’d be me, her and the darkness in a black and gruesome threesome. He would surround me and penetrate me and the more we did the more intense it became. It made me hate being touched, because as long as we were separated I could view her like an outsider viewing something good and kind and untainted. Once we touched, the darkness would envelope her too and take her over and the evil inside me would surround her. I always felt like I was infecting anyone I was with.

Relationships didn’t work. No one I dated was the right match, and I thought that maybe if I found the right person it would overwhelm him. Part of me knew that finding the right person wouldn’t help, so I became interested in girls who obviously had no interest in me. For a while I thought I was gay. I convinced myself that it wasn’t the darkness at all, but rather my orientation, because this would give me control over why things didn’t feel “right”. The fact that the darkness affected sexual matters most intensely made this idea make some sense and I convinced myself of this for a number of years, starting in college after my first relationship ended. I told people I was gay (at Trinity, not at Princeton), even though I wasn’t attracted to men and kept finding myself interested in girls. Because if being gay wasn’t the answer, then what was? People thought I was avoiding my orientation, but I was actually avoiding the truth, which is that while I’m straight, I will never be content with anyone. I know now that the darkness will never leave.

Last spring I met someone who was unlike anyone else I’d ever met. Someone who showed me just how well two people could get along and how much I could care about another human being. Someone I know I could be with and love for the rest of my life, if I weren’t so fucked up. Amazingly, she liked me. She liked the shell of the man the darkness had left behind. But it didn’t matter because I couldn’t be alone with her. It was never just the two of us, it was always the three of us: her, me and the darkness. The closer we got, the more intensely I’d feel the darkness, like some evil mirror of my emotions. All the closeness we had and I loved was complemented by agony that I couldn’t stand, from him. I realized that I would never be able to give her, or anyone, all of me or only me. She could never have me without the darkness and evil inside me. I could never have just her, without the darkness being a part of all of our interactions. I will never be able to be at peace or content or in a healthy relationship. I realized the futility of the romantic part of my life. If I had never met her, I would have realized this as soon as I met someone else who I meshed similarly well with. It’s likely that things wouldn’t have worked out with her and we would have broken up (with our relationship ending, like the majority of relationships do) even if I didn’t have this problem, since we only dated for a short time. But I will face exactly the same problems with the darkness with anyone else. Despite my hopes, love and compatability is not enough. Nothing is enough. There’s no way I can fix this or even push the darkness down far enough to make a relationship or any type of intimacy feasible.

So I watched as things fell apart between us. I had put an explicit time limit on our relationship, since I knew it couldn’t last because of the darkness and didn’t want to hold her back, and this caused a variety of problems. She was put in an unnatural situation that she never should have been a part of. It must have been very hard for her, not knowing what was actually going on with me, but this is not something I’ve ever been able to talk about with anyone. Losing her was very hard for me as well. Not because of her (I got over our relationship relatively quickly), but because of the realization that I would never have another relationship and because it signified the last true, exclusive personal connection I could ever have. This wasn’t apparent to other people, because I could never talk about the real reasons for my sadness. I was very sad in the summer and fall, but it was not because of her, it was because I will never escape the darkness with anyone. She was so loving and kind to me and gave me everything I could have asked for under the circumstances. I’ll never forget how much happiness she brought me in those briefs moments when I could ignore the darkness. I had originally planned to kill myself last winter but never got around to it. (Parts of this letter were written over a year ago, other parts days before doing this.) It was wrong of me to involve myself in her life if this were a possibility and I should have just left her alone, even though we only dated for a few months and things ended a long time ago. She’s just one more person in a long list of people I’ve hurt.

I could spend pages talking about the other relationships I’ve had that were ruined because of my problems and my confusion related to the darkness. I’ve hurt so many great people because of who I am and my inability to experience what needs to be experienced. All I can say is that I tried to be honest with people about what I thought was true.

I’ve spent my life hurting people. Today will be the last time.

I’ve told different people a lot of things, but I’ve never told anyone about what happened to me, ever, for obvious reasons. It took me a while to realize that no matter how close you are to someone or how much they claim to love you, people simply cannot keep secrets. I learned this a few years ago when I thought I was gay and told people. The more harmful the secret, the juicier the gossip and the more likely you are to be betrayed. People don’t care about their word or what they’ve promised, they just do whatever the fuck they want and justify it later. It feels incredibly lonely to realize you can never share something with someone and have it be between just the two of you. I don’t blame anyone in particular, I guess it’s just how people are. Even if I felt like this is something I could have shared, I have no interest in being part of a friendship or relationship where the other person views me as the damaged and contaminated person that I am. So even if I were able to trust someone, I probably would not have told them about what happened to me. At this point I simply don’t care who knows.

I feel an evil inside me. An evil that makes me want to end life. I need to stop this. I need to make sure I don’t kill someone, which is not something that can be easily undone. I don’t know if this is related to what happened to me or something different. I recognize the irony of killing myself to prevent myself from killing someone else, but this decision should indicate what I’m capable of.

So I’ve realized I will never escape the darkness or misery associated with it and I have a responsibility to stop myself from physically harming others.

I’m just a broken, miserable shell of a human being. Being molested has defined me as a person and shaped me as a human being and it has made me the monster I am and there’s nothing I can do to escape it. I don’t know any other existence. I don’t know what life feels like where I’m apart from any of this. I actively despise the person I am. I just feel fundamentally broken, almost non-human. I feel like an animal that woke up one day in a human body, trying to make sense of a foreign world, living among creatures it doesn’t understand and can’t connect with.

I have accepted that the darkness will never allow me to be in a relationship. I will never go to sleep with someone in my arms, feeling the comfort of their hands around me. I will never know what uncontimated intimacy is like. I will never have an exclusive bond with someone, someone who can be the recipient of all the love I have to give. I will never have children, and I wanted to be a father so badly. I think I would have made a good dad. And even if I had fought through the darkness and married and had children all while being unable to feel intimacy, I could have never done that if suicide were a possibility. I did try to minimize pain, although I know that this decision will hurt many of you. If this hurts you, I hope that you can at least forget about me quickly.

There’s no point in identifying who molested me, so I’m just going to leave it at that. I doubt the word of a dead guy with no evidence about something that happened over twenty years ago would have much sway.

You may wonder why I didn’t just talk to a professional about this. I’ve seen a number of doctors since I was a teenager to talk about other issues and I’m positive that another doctor would not have helped. I was never given one piece of actionable advice, ever. More than a few spent a large part of the session reading their notes to remember who I was. And I have no interest in talking about being raped as a child, both because I know it wouldn’t help and because I have no confidence it would remain secret. I know the legal and practical limits of doctor/patient confidentiality, growing up in a house where we’d hear stories about the various mental illnesses of famous people, stories that were passed down through generations. All it takes is one doctor who thinks my story is interesting enough to share or a doctor who thinks it’s her right or responsibility to contact the authorities and have me identify the molestor (justifying her decision by telling herself that someone else might be in danger). All it takes is a single doctor who violates my trust, just like the “friends” who I told I was gay did, and everything would be made public and I’d be forced to live in a world where people would know how fucked up I am. And yes, I realize this indicates that I have severe trust issues, but they’re based on a large number of experiences with people who have shown a profound disrepect for their word and the privacy of others.

People say suicide is selfish. I think it’s selfish to ask people to continue living painful and miserable lives, just so you possibly won’t feel sad for a week or two. Suicide may be a permanent solution to a temporary problem, but it’s also a permanent solution to a ~23 year-old problem that grows more intense and overwhelming every day.

Some people are just dealt bad hands in this life. I know many people have it worse than I do, and maybe I’m just not a strong person, but I really did try to deal with this. I’ve tried to deal with this every day for the last 23 years and I just can’t fucking take it anymore.

I often wonder what life must be like for other people. People who can feel the love from others and give it back unadulterated, people who can experience sex as an intimate and joyous experience, people who can experience the colors and happenings of this world without constant misery. I wonder who I’d be if things had been different or if I were a stronger person. It sounds pretty great.

I’m prepared for death. I’m prepared for the pain and I am ready to no longer exist. Thanks to the strictness of New Jersey gun laws this will probably be much more painful than it needs to be, but what can you do. My only fear at this point is messing something up and surviving.

—-

I’d also like to address my family, if you can call them that. I despise everything they stand for and I truly hate them, in a non-emotional, dispassionate and what I believe is a healthy way. The world will be a better place when they’re dead—one with less hatred and intolerance.

If you’re unfamiliar with the situation, my parents are fundamentalist Christians who kicked me out of their house and cut me off financially when I was 19 because I refused to attend seven hours of church a week.

They live in a black and white reality they’ve constructed for themselves. They partition the world into good and evil and survive by hating everything they fear or misunderstand and calling it love. They don’t understand that good and decent people exist all around us, “saved” or not, and that evil and cruel people occupy a large percentage of their church. They take advantage of people looking for hope by teaching them to practice the same hatred they practice.

A random example:

“I am personally convinced that if a Muslim truly believes and obeys the Koran, he will be a terrorist.” – George Zeller, August 24, 2010.

If you choose to follow a religion where, for example, devout Catholics who are trying to be good people are all going to Hell but child molestors go to Heaven (as long as they were “saved” at some point), that’s your choice, but it’s fucked up. Maybe a God who operates by those rules does exist. If so, fuck Him.

Their church was always more important than the members of their family and they happily sacrificed whatever necessary in order to satisfy their contrived beliefs about who they should be.

I grew up in a house where love was proxied through a God I could never believe in. A house where the love of music with any sort of a beat was literally beaten out of me. A house full of hatred and intolerance, run by two people who were experts at appearing kind and warm when others were around. Parents who tell an eight year old that his grandmother is going to Hell because she’s Catholic. Parents who claim not to be racist but then talk about the horrors of miscegenation. I could list hundreds of other examples, but it’s tiring.

Since being kicked out, I’ve interacted with them in relatively normal ways. I talk to them on the phone like nothing happened. I’m not sure why. Maybe because I like pretending I have a family. Maybe I like having people I can talk to about what’s been going on in my life. Whatever the reason, it’s not real and it feels like a sham. I should have never allowed this reconnection to happen.

I wrote the above a while ago, and I do feel like that much of the time. At other times, though, I feel less hateful. I know my parents honestly believe the crap they believe in. I know that my mom, at least, loved me very much and tried her best. One reason I put this off for so long is because I know how much pain it will cause her. She has been sad since she found out I wasn’t “saved”, since she believes I’m going to Hell, which is not a sadness for which I am responsible. That was never going to change, and presumably she believes the state of my physical body is much less important than the state of my soul. Still, I cannot intellectually justify this decision, knowing how much it will hurt her. Maybe my ability to take my own life, knowing how much pain it will cause, shows that I am a monster who doesn’t deserve to live. All I know is that I can’t deal with this pain any longer and I’m am truly sorry I couldn’t wait until my family and everyone I knew died so this could be done without hurting anyone. For years I’ve wished that I’d be hit by a bus or die while saving a baby from drowning so my death might be more acceptable, but I was never so lucky.

—-

To those of you who have shown me love, thank you for putting up with all my shittiness and moodiness and arbitrariness. I was never the person I wanted to be. Maybe without the darkness I would have been a better person, maybe not. I did try to be a good person, but I realize I never got very far.

I’m sorry for the pain this causes. I really do wish I had another option. I hope this letter explains why I needed to do this. If you can’t understand this decision, I hope you can at least forgive me.

Bill Zeller

—-

Please save this letter and repost it if gets deleted. I don’t want people to wonder why I did this. I disseminated it more widely than I might have otherwise because I’m worried that my family might try to restrict access to it. I don’t mind if this letter is made public. In fact, I’d prefer it be made public to people being unable to read it and drawing their own conclusions.

Feel free to republish this letter, but only if it is reproduced in its entirety.

Monday Madness

I woke up at 7:25 confused.

What day is it? Is this morning or evening?

According to my official schedule, I should be waking up at 5 am feeling rested and refreshed. Unfortunately, I still couldn’t fall asleep around 2 am and decided to take a Benadryl just so I could get a few hours of sleep.

I send Nicky a text “Guess who won’t be at work at 8”?
She calls me back to say she isn’t feeling well but is on the way to work.

Text from Michelle 7:55 “Shirley isn’t coming in today and I am just leaving my house.”
I text back “You’re doing better than me”!

I work with 4 women and 1 doctor. Mondays are insane and the only one there is the doctor. We are going to be in trouble!

I then rush to get Hannah ready for school and she seems just as dazed and confused as I am.

She can’t seem to figure out what to put on first.

No breakfast or lunch ready for Hannah. I told her she will have to get a school lunch today and she tells me she will just drink water from the fountain. I pull together cheezits, water and a left over brownie and put it in her back pack. Anything is better than just fountain water right? Can you imagine her telling her teachers that she was having lunch at the water fountain?

We race to the freezing cold car and buckle in to race to school that is 20 minutes away and starts at 7:45. But…
The car won’t start! The battery is completely dead for some unknown reason and it is after 8. I call Nicky to let her know things have gone from bad to worse. Imagine how she feels! I have her fax an excuse to the school so Hannah won’t have to go to detention. I look up and down the street and realize the predicament I find myself in once again.

Everyone I know is already at work or tied up. I consider going back to bed but instead I “Put my big girl panties on” and decided to put on some makeup as I pondered what to do next. I texted Alex to please come by after he leaves meeting. I really hate to inconvenience him but so happy he was going to be there soon. Alex saves the day again!

One the way to Hannah’s school around 9:
Hannah decides she is hungry now.
The Low Fuel Light comes on
I still have no debit card
I go thru long line at ATM to get $20 cash
Hannah gets a Hershey bar for breakfast
I get $15 in gas
Alex rushes to his Mom’s house to meet ambulance- admitted with Pneumonia

When I get to work
Shirley is there. She thought she was in congestive heart failure but is ok now???
Patients lined up

Charts everywhere
Doctor typing away on the other side of my desk. We are face to face all day!

My entire day was chaos. Imagine how bad it would have been without the black eyed peas and cabbage.

True Mom Confessions

Preparing for Perfect Monday

Mondays can really be tough especially after a long holiday weekend. All routines are off after taking it easy over Christmas and New Year’s break. Staying up late and not being prepared to are often the reason for the “Chaotic Morning Rush.” Waking up late, searching for something to wear, finding breakfast, loosing car keys, preparing lunch, finding keys…Kind of like a scavenger hunt when you are just waking up. Everyone leaves feeling rushed and usually something is forgotten at home. To top it off, there is only enough gas in the car to get to the gas station where you grab and Coke and honey bun for breakfast and maybe even chips for lunch. When you go thru the long car pool line, you realize how messy your car is because the backpack has drug the trash in the floorboard out. The school calls because she is tardy again. Walk into work with a waiting room full of patients that you aren’t ready for. Then after long day at work and school, you head home hungry and irritable. You hope none of your utilities are cut off for nonpayment and can’t remember the last time you made a payment. You pick up fast food because it seems easier and then do a repeat last night and this morning.

To have a perfect Monday you have to develop a plan.
Car-full of fuel, washed and vacuumed. I don’t want to leave anything such as a simple backpack in the car so I won’t wake up to a smashed window from a thief.

Laundry-fresh bed linens, clean towels, clean clothes

Menu Plan- inventory what you have and make a list of what you can eat over the week.

Shopping-Milk, bread, eggs, toilet paper, snacks…

Backpack/Gym Bag- Packed and at door

Phones: Charged and ready

Check calendar- school notes, tests, projects, fees, pictures?

Bills- Organize your bills and pay online from your bank account on your paydays. I get payed twice a month so I only have to work on this on 1st and 15th. I put my mortgage and car note on auto pay so they will always be payed on time and they are safe!

House-Picked up and tidy, swept, mopped, dusted, trash out, kitchen and bathroom spotless.

Outfit – Everything layed out and ready to go including underwear and shoes. Sweater? Jacket?

Lunch- Healthy lunch packed in fridge and ready to grab

Pamper night – Saturday or Sunday evening we have a home spa treat. We deep condition our hair, facial mask or scrub, mani/pedi, shave, bubble bath, blowout hair and moisturize skin esp. dry feet. Since we have to do all this stuff anyway, why not turn it into a treat

Bed time-Go to bed at a reasonable time so you will feel rested.

Wake up-When you wake up early you can relax and make the less stressful for everyone. I wake up at 5am and then wake Hannah up at 5:30. Enjoy good breakfast and take meds/vitamins. Check weather report.

The time you invest over the weekend getting ready for Monday will make a huge difference in your week. We have to do all of this anyway and it is so much better to have it done in advance.

Don't Fail Me Black Eyed Peas!

I always plan for a perfect 1st Monday. It usually isn't but I still have hope. This afternoon, as I was getting everything ready for my "Perfect Monday" I had a few crises that came up that should have indicated that I should just call in sick today.

I grabbed my keys and began looking for my elusive debit card. I looked and looked and looked everywhere. Places I would never dream of putting it I looked. I looked in all pockets. I looked in the car. Thinking back, the last time I used the card was when I went to the store around the corner Friday. I am trying to remember what I wore and going thru the pockets of everything. I searched for a couple of hours. Still no debit card…

So I called the bank to cancel the card and reissue a new one. So I am questioned for usual information the bank asks like name, address, phone #, and last four # of social. They say I should have the card in 2 weeks and I then ask for rush service as usual. This time, they will send it out rush for a $5 fee if I can answer a few challenge questions. She first asked about what parish I lived in years ago and that was easy. Then she asked what state someone with my last name lived in. I told her I had no idea who that was. I passed the challenge and my card should be here Tuesday!

My debit card seems to hide from me at least 3 times a year. It is so easy to slip it in my pocket and not have to carry my purse or even put it in the console in the car. I wish I had a spare card because it always turns up. Now I am going to have to postpone the car wash and fuel up that were going to make my Monday morning go better.

So I decide I have enough gas for Monday and the car can just stay dirty. I will continue getting ready for the week. I make sure everything is in Hannah’s back pack, purse and gym bag are ready at door. I look for her lunch bag and then remember she left it at school.

As I take the clothes from the dryer something falls to the floor. Guess what it was???

Well at least I know we have clothes ready for tomorrow.

Forget the nice Sunday dinner. I think we will have hot pockets and brownies instead. I'm beat!

Jan 3rd-9th Menu

Monday
Breakfast – Omelet
Dinner- Ziti Casserole

Tuesday
Breakfast - Fruit and yogurt
Dinner- Oven Fried Chicken Chimichanga

Wednesday
Breakfast-Grilled peanut butter and banana sandwich
Dinner- Chicken and wild rice

Thursday
Breakfast-Cereal
Dinner-Southern Plate Corn Chowder

Friday
Breakfast-Bacon, eggs
Dinner- Pizza and Movie Night

Saturday
Breakfast- Breakfast Stir Fry
Lunch-?
Dinner-Thai chicken pizza

Sunday
Breakfast-Bran Muffins
Lunch?
Dinner-Pioneer Woman meat loaf and mashed potatoes, Blackberry cobbler

Happy New Year

This is going to be a changing year for me! I have discovered an incredibly inspirational place called Abundance Blog. I hit the jackpot of inspiration to help make 2011 the best year ever.


Here are 44 ways to have a great 2011:

1. Create a list of 10 healthy, easy to fix breakfast meals (purchase a great cookbook or go online and look for recipes).

2. Create a list of 10 healthy, easy to fix lunches.

3. Create a list of 10 healthy, easy to fix dinners.

4. Create a list of 10 healthy, easy to fix snacks.

5. Each week, choose the meals and snacks you’ll be eating that week by referring to your lists of 10 breakfast meals, lunches, dinners, and snacks.

6. Establish a day and time to go grocery shopping each week.

7. Set a time when you’re going to prepare your meals for the week in bulk and freeze them.

8. Create a grocery list template (here’s one sample you can use, here’s another one, and here’s a third) so that you can easily create a list of the groceries that you’ll need each week. (You can consider creating a grocery list that’s ordered in the same way as the aisles of the supermarket where you do your shopping, but that’s probably too OCD for most people).

9. Set up a weight chart to keep track of your weight, percentage of body fat, and waist circumference, and post it up in your bathroom.

10. Purchase a good quality scale that will allow you to weigh yourself and keep track of your percentage of body fat each week.

11. Set your watch to beep once an hour, or set up a computer reminder, to make sure that you drink water on a regular basis throughout the day.

12. Remember the 80/20 rule and give yourself permission to cheat a little on your healthy eating during the weekends (yes, Pareto applies to everything).

13. Choose a sport you’re going to practice consistently in 2011.

14. Identify your 3 greatest accomplishments for 2010, and write down what you learned from each. How can you apply those lessons to 2011?

15. Identify your 3 greatest mistakes or failures for 2010, and write down what you learned from each. How can you apply those lessons to 2011?

16. Come up with a list of 5 positive habits you want to adopt in 2011. If you need help coming up with a list of positive habits, go here: 58 Habits That Will Help You Succeed.

17. Come up with a list of 5 negative habits you want to drop in 2011.

18. Set your goals for the year. You can follow the same process that Chris Guillebeau, from the popular blog “The Art of Nonconformity”, uses: How to Conduct Your Own Annual Review.

19. Create a list of all of your assets, as well as a list of all of your liabilities. Subtract your liabilities from your assets and come up with your net worth. Then, create a plan to increase your net worth in 2011.

20. If you’re in debt, create a debt repayment plan to get yourself out of debt.

21. Create a budget or spending plan for 2011.

22. Identify 5 ways in which you can lower your expenses for this year.

23. Start planning how to create one new source of passive income this year.

24. Make a list of 5 things you will do this year to educate yourself about money matters.

25. Make a list of 10 people you’re going to reach out to this year: this can be friends from the past that you’ve lost touch with, possible mentors, people you’d like to network with, and so on.

26. Start keeping a gratitude journal: each day give thanks–and really feel gratitude–for five things.

27. Make a list of 10 things you’re going to say “no” to this year. This can be commitments that are not aligned with your goals, toxic people who drain you of your energy, time wasters–such as checking your email every fifteen minutes or mindlessly surfing the Internet–and so on.

28. Make a list of 10 simple pleasures you can incorporate into your life on a regular basis. Examples include sitting out on the porch drinking flavored coffee in your favorite mug, going for a walk with your dog, or taking a scented bath.

29. Make a list of 10 things you can do to venture outside of your comfort zone. This can be giving a speech in front of a large audience, asking for more responsibility at work, entering your famous apple pie in a contest, and so on.

30. Go through each room of your house and make a list of 10 items for each room which are currently cluttering up your home. Get rid of them (donate them, recycle them, or throw them in the trash).

31. Make a list of 10 things that need to be repaired around the house (light bulbs that need to be changed, faucets that drip, cabinet doors that are sagging or sticking, and so on).

32. Identify 5 tasks that you perform on a regular basis which you don’t enjoy doing, and find a way to either stop doing the task, delegate it to someone else, or outsource it.

33. Identify the one thing that you can accomplish in 2011 which would allow you to call the year a success.

34. Conduct at least one experiment in order to move closer toward finding your life’s passion (Finding Your Life’s Passion: Conduct Experiments).

35. Choose a cause that you’re committed to. Donate time or money to that cause throughout the year.

36. Start a self-esteem bulletin board: put up drawings from your child that say “I love you dad”, emails from happy clients, a photograph in which you look great, and so on. Make sure you place the bulletin board in a place where you can see it often.

37. Keep a journal. You can follow Julia Cameron’s suggestion of keeping morning pages, or you can simply sit down to write whenever you have a problem and need to get in touch with your inner guidance. For more tips on how to keep a journal, read this post: Journaling As a Way to Rediscover Your Authentic Self.

38. Create a morning routine that will allow you to start each day feeling positive and energized.

39. Create a bedtime routine that will help you release all of the stresses of the day so that you can easily drift off into a peaceful sleep.

40. Make a list of 5 things you’re going to do to have more energy in 2011. You can read this post for ideas: 21 Easy Ways to Boost and Replenish Your Energy.

41. Make a list of 5 things you will do whenever you feel yourself getting upset over something. It could be taking several deep breaths, shifting your thoughts to a positive memory, doing a round of Emotional Freedom Technique, and so on.

42. Write down 3 things you can do to improve your image and appearance, such as getting a flattering haircut, getting a good shave (for men), or getting makeup that better suits your coloring (for women).

43. Write down 3 grudges or resentments you need to let go of.

44. Write down the names of 5 people you admire, whether you know them or not, and then write down why you admire them. Lastly, write down what you can do to acquire the traits or characteristics that you admire about these people.