I had all these grand plans to get writing on here and they never happened this week. But at least I am here today.
I want to start off with something that I thought was profound. And honestly I never thought about it this way. My family knows this but I know more then just family read this blog. My father is a recovering alcoholic and substance abuser. He has been clean for about 18 years (if my memory is correct). This essentially means that I have known my father in his drinking years, and now in his clean years.
Needless to say the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman effected me when I heard that he had been clean for 20 years before he fell “off the wagon”. I wanted to think that this was his problem and that he is the rarity. So I did what anyone else would do in my shoes, I called my dad. To my surprise, my father said that his problems are always there. He could totally see how someone could be clean for 20 years and then on day, not be.
Then I saw an article that was online from Time. In it is states:
[Mr. Hoffman] did not die from an overdose of heroin — he died from heroin. We should stop implying that if he’d just taken the proper amount then everything would have been fine.
He didn’t die because he was partying too hard or because he was depressed — he died because he was an addict on a day of the week with a y in it.
This is basically what my father said to me.
See all of these 18’ish years I have been looking at my father and it was sort of like my cancer. As the years went by I pretty much assumed that my father was cured. I mean if I was 18 years removed from my cancer I would be more then cured!
However this case has opened my eyes. With drug addiction (be it alcohol or other substances) there is no “cured” from. It is just living with not being on said substance at that moment.
I have no reason to think that my dad will not be like his father, who once he got clean, he stayed like that for the rest of his life. It is just eye opening to me to learn that not everyone does that.
Maybe this is obvious to other people. However I feel like I just had a light bulb go off so I thought I would share.
Switching gears…
This week we had an ice storm. So Wednesday Tony was home from work, but working. I think that is why I haven’t had the time that I normally do to do different things. 2 strange days and my whole week gets messed up! Ha ha!
What we discovered when the power was out, that I eluded to in my last post was that we wanted to do a Whole 30. For those who don’t know, this is basically eliminating most sugar (you can still have fruit and veggies that have sugar, you just can’t add sugar) for 30 days. The point of this is sort of like the point of lent. To think about what you are doing and to improve your eating. Lent is more to focus on God, but you get the point.
I thought since I am still breastfeeding that this may be too restrictive for me. So I looked into another program that is similar that is called 21 Day Sugar Detox. This has modifications to follow if you are nursing or pregnant.
So off I went and planned the whole week (okay the book did this for me) only to discover that our food budget would likely go up A LOT. Neither of us liked that idea so now we are back to planning things the way I have been. We may go and do a Whole 30 after Easter, but as of right now we are going to keep trying to eat the grains and other non-paleo foods in the house and not replace them. This week we finished all cold cereal in the house. We have a bit of hot cereal left in the house. We are getting there with other items but it may take a while.
Switching gears again…
News on the boys!
Max is doing suddenly very well in math. He wasn’t getting it at all for a while but now he is doing great! It is like something just clicked for him. YAY! He is still fascinated with science and is doing well in english/reading/writing. I wouldn’t say his writing is perfect, but I do see a day when his writing is better then Tony’s and that isn’t saying much.
Nathaniel has been growing. YAY! He is now at 13 lbs 4.5 oz as of this morning. That puts him at the 0.3%. Which for him is GREAT. He also seems to be gaining on the 0.4% (which today he would have to be 13 lbs 7 oz) so maybe he will reach that before our doctor appointment at the end of the month. One could only hope!
However Nathaniel is VERY clingy to me right now. I can hardly put him down. He screams at a level that I am pretty sure only Fenway can hear whenever I set him down. Right now he is sleeping in the wrap on me. I am thinking it is teething but it could also be food sensitivities. We are not really feeding him solids still (which also means that his weight gain is amazing!) but I have a feeling that when we do, we are going to have issues. That is a big reason why we are going Paleo as a family. Tony and I have always said that we would never be short order cooks to our kids so if one child has allergies, we all do.
Nathaniel still has just 2 teeth, however his weight gain is making his face look fuller and he is developing dimples! SOOO cute!
Well tomorrow Max has his new level class for ice skating. That should be WAY fun. We also might get some to a lot of snow. The storm name is Nika. Wasn’t that an Elton John song? I guess I need to dig that out. Ha ha! Family on the West Coast that are in the snow right now, your storm is Orion. Funny you get O before we get N but N started before O so it make sense. It just doesn’t effect us yet. I just want to know if it will still be Nika if the other storm joins it closer to the Jersey shore and we get a blizzard here. Since the original Nika was coming from the mid west (or middle of the country, that always bugged me as it is in the middle of the country) and the other storm is coming up from Florida. Does it turn into Pax then?
Here are the remaining storm names:
Pax, Quintus, Rex, Senteca, Titan, Ulysses, Vulcan, Wiley, Xenia, Yona, and Zephyr.