Day 5: Momma told me there'd be days like this

Did I mention I wasn’t a morning person, oh yeah, I think I might of. I’m feeling so grouchy this morning. I even went down and did a 30 minute kickboxing tape to try to punch and kick my way out of the grumblies. That only slightly lessened them.. I took a long hot shower attempting to wash them away. That worked a little too. Now I am attempting to write them all away. Here goes!

Anyway, last night the light went out at 11:17 PM, at 3:33 PM a loud noise woke me up, and at 6:00 AM the alarm went off and my eyes felt like they were glued shut. I slowly climbed out of bed, grabbed my robe and went to the kitchen. Now after the success of the quinoa and garbanzo bean salad two days ago, and the short-order cook episode of yesterday, I was ready to try to feed the entire family the same healthy recipe, Peach Quinoa with Flax and Nuts. In my head, I had been mentally putting the recipe together the most efficient way to get my husband out the door to catch his bus. So, I stumbled to the kitchen, turn on the way too bright light and grab the recipe. Oh man, the peaches have to be added at the same time as everything else. The peaches are in the freezer in the garage.

A couple of weeks ago the ice maker on the fridge died. We dismantled the freezer in an attempt to fix it, but couldn’t. Brought in the Sears guy and found we needed a new part that won’t be here for 10 days. So everything frozen is in the garage. Grrr. I am in a time crunch. I have approximately 20-24 minutes to make breakfast, serve it, and have him eat it, or he misses his bus.

The recipe serves 4, so I decide to double it, so the whole family can have a wholesome homemade breakfast. I run downstairs, into the garage, grab the peaches, run upstairs, halfway up realize that there’s not enough peaches in the bag, run the peaches to the counter, run back downstairs, grab the other bag of peaches and start throwing the recipe together. I have about 2 minutes before it won’t have time to cook the 20 minutes for my husband to eat it. Everything’s in, expect the allspice. Of course I have allspice, I try to keep all the common spices on hand. I’m going through every spice in the cupboard ... nutmeg, cinnamon, ground cloves, whole cloves, ugh, where’s the allspice. I find whole allspice, no ground. Don’t have time to grind it. Decide to substitute with Pumpkin spice, which is a pleasant mix of all the spices I mentioned above. Throw it in there, get the pan on the stove, stir, stir, stir. I am now at the point where if I don’t start the timer right now, I’m out of luck. It’s not boiling. I stick my finger in the pan. It’s ICE cold. Of course it is. I just mixed cold organic almond milk with frozen peaches ... not a lot of potential for heat generation. I give up on the idea of my husband trying out my wonderfully fruity delicious hot cereal and throw together the same egg burrito he got yesterday. Strike 1 on my morning.

I help my daughter with some things to get ready for school and the quinoa cereal slowly takes it’s time warming up to the morning. Finally the cereal is boiling! I set the timer for 20 minutes and set it to simmer. I pleasantly wake up son #1 telling him unless he wants to compete with his sister for the hot water he needs to get up right away. “I’ll be up in a minute”. Yeah, I was seeing it. I leave for a while, I come back and I again wake up my son and tell him he has about 1 minute before his sister get the shower. Yeah, he’s getting right up. He finally gets up, showers, and is in the bathroom still getting ready when his carpool arrives. “Bye mom” and out he goes. Strike 2 on my morning.

The cereal finally is finished. I add chopped pecans and some flax seed and serve it out in 4 bowls. Daughter #1 comes in. Looks at it with terror in her eyes. I love 11-year-old drama. I take a bite. Hmmm, not bad. The peaches taste hot and fresh, there’s a nice hint of spices and I love the crunch of the pecan with the texture of the quinoa. She takes a bite. I think I may have poisoned her. I suggest a little brown sugar and milk for her. She goes with it. Nope, not happening. Things are just not going all the well this morning. In the meantime, Son #2 runs upstairs, doesn’t have time for breakfast, his car pool will be here any minute. Doesn’t he want to take it in a cup with a plastic spoon, I’ve spent all morning making breakfast for the family. UH, NO! I guess I probably wouldn’t want to take some weird looking concoction my mother is forcing me to eat for breakfast into a car filled with other 14-year olds. Strike 3!!!!!!!!! I’m so irritated by then. I barely notice that the 8 year old only ate the peaches, (she did ask for more fruit) and who knows what the 2 year old ate. I left Daughter #1 in charge and went downstairs and turned on the work out video. Hoping no one would come down, no one would talk to me and knowing that in a few short minutes they would all be gone to school.

Day 4: Short-order cook:

Well, after 4 Omega-3 eggs, 6 normal eggs, 3 brown rice tortillas, 2 flour tortillas, 3 cups of juice, a small amount of salsa and a bowl of oatmeal, I feel like a Short-order cook. Fed husband, fed me, fed daughters, fed son #1, fed son #2, fed son #3, cleaned up everything until it was spotless and left the kitchen 2 ½ hours later. Hmmmm, and this is what I get for waking up at 6:00 AM every morning??

I am NOT a morning person, let me repeat my self, I AM NOT A MORNING PERSON!!!! My absolute favorite time of the day is about 10:30 PM when the entire house is asleep and I have endless hours of undisturbed time to do whatever I want ... work on a project, read books, soak in a bath, surf the ‘net. It’s 100% unadulterated ME time. However, time and time again I am reading articles and books telling me that the 8 hours from 10 to 6 are healthier than the eight hours from 12 to 8. So, it an attempt to follow my “plan”. I am attempting to change my habits. You know the saying “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” I am feeling like an old dog.

Late nights usually lead to late mornings! My kids are pretty self-sustaining having a mom that wasn’t very good at jumping up and getting out the door. They have for many years gotten up mostly on their own, gotten breakfast, made lunches, and headed out the door with not much more from me than a conversation while I stayed in bed and let them have the run of the house. They would bring me papers to sign, spelling words to study, or just come and sit when they had extra time. I actually have some of my best conversations with my daughter during these early hours. But this is all supposed to change. I am going to become a morning person!!

My husband has to leave the house by 6:41 or he will not make his bus. He is going along with the UltraMind Solution Program, but isn’t putting a whole lot of thought into it. He just eats what I tell him to. So, if I have something available for breakfast he will eat it, otherwise he skips it. So, we worked it out that I will get up at 6 AM, I will make breakfast while he gets ready for the day and have it ready for him to eat right before he leaves for work. I figured it was a good idea to help the kids avoid the sugary cereals we have a tendency to buy by including them at the breakfast table.

We have been attempting to turn the light out by 11:00, eventually working on 10:30 and even 10:00 ideally. The light goes out, my husband starts breathing deeply and out he goes and there I lay thinking about how good this is for me to go to bed early ... yeah right. I have tried this before, but usually by about 3 days into it, I’m done and back to the late nights I go. But this is a 6 week program. So, I’m committed to work at it this time.