Frustration

I had a rude awakening last night: sometimes I think I'm doing well at my diet and then I realize that in actuality I'm not. Call me self-delusional. Or, at the least, absent-minded. In other words, I forget that in one week we made lemon poppy seed bread, chocolate rice krispie treats, fruit cobbler, pistachio fluff, and sugar cookies, and that friends brought over macaroons, and two delicious kinds of sugar cookies. Even when I just sample, that is a lot of food, and sometimes I do more than sample. I thought I had been doing well at Core (the more South Beach/Atkins-style of WW) but then realized that all those things add up. No wonder I've been trying to lose the same 3 lbs to get past a mental and numerical hump. So, I've tossed my Amish Friendship Bread starter. I just don't need to bake bread every 10 days, even if I give most of it away. If I want to bake later on, I certainly know how to throw together a quick bread without starter. Even if I have a good time doing the starter cycle, it's just not worth the frustration.

Frustration. Transition. Rut. These were all words we bandied about this morning during our playdate. I'm not the only mom feeling at a loss this season. Everyone I have talked to this week is reevaluating life, schedules, priorities. We're all a little depressed about our friend's move, a little unsure of what meaningful projects or activities we want to take on next as the children grow, a little tense about finances and holidays and expectations, even a little sleep- deprived because of the end of DST (or infants, depending), not to mention identifiably concrete stressors of illness, death, grief, unemployment, finances, moves, and family issues.

But at least we have each other. Miss T wrote today about her "honeyline" of friends who support her. And we are all fortunate in our network of friends. When another friend called me on Monday just to say, "I'm worried about you" when I missed playdate, I was touched and comforted; it actually improved my spirits. And so we all reach out to each other in a continuous web (okay, skipping from bees to spiders here) of connection. Being cared for, and in turn caring for others, and not just the members of my immediate family, is what keeps me going. Even when we are all frustrated.