Church and Food Porn

This blog will only be half serious :)
Being that I grew up Catholic, a religion I personally view to be one that is somewhat private and lacking in evangelism that other religions tend to encourage (keep in mind this is only my idiotic opinion), these next few paragraphs are going to be very foreign for me, and unlike me. However, I just have this feeling that I need to say them.

I had a wonderful, amazing church in Texas. Of course I don't think I appreciated all it offered until I left Texas, but in retrospect it was awesome. It had a mom's support group with a Christian based message every other week where they watched your child (and not just watched but loved on, sang Bible songs with, etc). It had an array of weekly Bible studies to choose from during which they again, watched your child. Did I mention all this Christian based child watching was all free? This church was led by an extremely talented Preacher whose message always seemed to be geared directly at me. He was engaging, funny and made me look forward to service. If you live in College Station you should really try Central Baptist!

Since we moved here we have been sassy about church. We tried one very close to home that we weren't sure was the right fit and then basically played church hooky for more weeks than I care to admit. Then the friend who has been so amazing to me since I moved here, Jessica, told me about a church she was going to called Calvary Sawgrass. We decided to try it this past Sunday. I dropped Brooks in the arms of a woman I could instantly tell was a Christian and would love on my son while I went to pray. Is there anything better??

Within 5 minutes of being at service, I was tearing up at the wonderful music, and I could literally feel God hug me, and maybe even whisper "welcome back." Is this the pregnant hormones? Well, maybe a little. But God loves us so much and just wants a little of our time every week. If you don't attend a church, or don't attend a church you love, I really encourage you to find one. It is honestly amazing what he can do to lift you up when you attend and give of yourself. I admit, I find it hard to go to church sometimes. My husband works a lot of hours and I am selfish of his time when he has off. When I'm alone and he's in football season, I blame it on getting there with my son by myself. But man, it helps me in every aspect of my life when I do go.

This first half of this blog post today was very hard for me. I am not the type to talk about my relationship with God. Just not my style. But I really felt a calling from him to write about this and encourage others to find a church if they don't have one. I appreciate it if you just read every word. Below I found a verse from the Bible about finding the right church. Below that I continue on my blog with other musings :)

Romans 16:16 ESV
Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ greet you.

With that being said, though I am striving daily to become a better daughter, mother, and wife for God, I must talk about a fact. When I am pregnant, food becomes my porn. Oh. My. Gosh. Food is all I have. If you come at me during meal time, I will literally come back at you like a spider monkey.

I am an eater. Can't really remember a time when I didn't love food. But being pregnant brings my relationship with food to another level. Before we may have been best friends? We have known each other forever, we know everything about one another, our likes our dislikes, we love another. When I am pregnant, the relationship changes. One might say....we become lovers. I lust for food. I think about food pretty much all day long. I think about food in my car, at the gym while I am lifting, at the park when a mom breaks out a snack pack. I think about my dinner when I'm eating breakfast. I start sweating with excitement when I know I'm going to eat a certain food I love. It's lust. And food is my porn.

With food as my lover, I begin to eat things I normally do not eat. You see I have a few vices in life that I love for which pregnancy creates a huge hurdle. They are: running, wine and coffee. I had complications with my first pregnancy making running long distances off limits. We all know nobody likes a drunk preggo lady so wine is off the shelf for 10 months. I do have coffee in moderation, but feel immense guilt the entire time, and I do not get to have my venti starbucks jet fuel that makes me even more on crack than I already am. All I'm left with is food! So you better believe that I'm going to be eating some sassy things.

About 2 weeks ago I took my little boy to Target to get a Little Tikes basketball hoop to play with and saw ground beef mini sliders on sale. They expired the next day and I'd have to make them that night. My biggest worry was that it was 3 p.m., how would I make it until 7 p.m. when my hubby returned home to eat these things!? I LOVVVVE a good burger, and since these were little mini sliders, I figured they were basically diet burgers. If you know me, you know that I eat mostly pretty healthy, so the image later that night of a gal in a gross old t-shirt and my husbands plaid boxers frying up burgers with the grease hitting me was quite a site. This is what pregnancy does to people! I still have dreams about those sliders and know I will have them again. To be honest I really don't know if I can type about them and not have them tonight, so Zac if you're reading this, we are having mini burgers tonight!

For some reason I also use pregnancy as an excuse to resort back to a habit that I really got carried away with during my first pregnancy: eating in bed. If you want to feel totally gross, then try eating a taco salad in bed. You know you have a problem when you put on a special "eating in bed shirt," because you know it will be covered in ground beef and sour cream when you are done and you don't want to get your jammies all gross.

What naturally goes along with food being my number one priority during pregnancy is an unfortunate side effect mostly for my husband: sometimes needing a certain food RIGHT THIS SECOND. I always used to think those people who posted their food on facebook were pretty gross. Um, hi I don't need to see your half eaten tacos from Chuy's but thanks. Now, I find myself immediately thinking - oh gosh, if I don't get my hands on a taco in 20 minutes, the world may end.

I'm still in that stage where the baby bump is not really big enough to be cute but it's big enough to notice and have people just assume I've been hitting the beef sliders too hard. As much as I loathe the weight gain, I'm actually looking forward to having a baby bump that is definitely without a doubt a baby bump. I'm 5 lbs up and climbing and if I make those sliders again tonight, I just might pop.

Pregnant Pause

Now that Big Mama is finally in her 13th week I am ecstatic to be able to annunce that I am with child! We are thrilled that our little man Brooks will have a friend to play with because I'm sure this Mom gets a little boring day after day.

As thrilling as this is, of course I had to round out my 1st trimester the classy way: partying in South Beach! I got to attend the Bachelorette party of one of my very best friends 2 weekends ago, and spent 3 days partying my buns off with an awesome group of girls, and some of the classiest people this side of the Mississippi. And by classy I actually mean not classy at all. Which was perfect because I fit right in.
First off, it just happened to be a Lesbian and Gay Pride convention, so within 1 hour of my arrival to beautiful South Beach I felt compelled to tell my unborn baby why we were around such a colorful crowd. That really set the weekend off just right for what was to come.

When you are pregnant the first thing that comes to mind for most people is probably not a weekend of debauchery in a city that can only be described as the Vegas of Florida. I had spent my first trimester mostly really, really tired and was in bed with a handful of dove chocolates or a bowl of ice cream most nights, so I was a little bit worried that I would a) not be able to keep up with the night life, or b) find that I still loved it so much I would have to give in and fly to LA to be Snooki's new sidekick.

I will say that it was really hard to watch everyone in the entire city enjoy cocktails while I went wild with my water with extra lemons, but I had a blast the whole weekend. We saw Latin Dancers, accidentally stumbled on to a completely lesbian  bar and were welcomed with open arms, went to the hottest night club in South Beach, and finished the weekend off with a really, really graphic drag show. Overall, I think my unborn baby has an idea that mama is not Mother Theresa.

One of my very favorite things to do is to dress up and go dancing, so the night at the club was probably my favorite. I wore insanely impractical shoes, a sequin dress that fit only because I forced it onto my growing body, and more make up than I have probably worn collectively in the last 3 months. We danced the night away until 2 am and that would have to go down as my favorite night. However, the night did not end as planned....I headed home about an hour before the rest of the crowd with a good friend of mine, Sara, and despite my complete sober-ness, was so concerned helping Sara out of the cab that I left my phone in the cab! This is absolutely the worst feeling in the world, and I didn't even have that wine buzz that makes you sort of laugh about it. I called the main cab company to see if there was a way to track it down and without a specific cab number that I had gone in, the lady gently told me that "there was no way on earth we are finding this phone."

I will say that there is something about being in a nightclub, 100% sober, and pregnant, that feels just a smidge trashy. I caught eyes with quite a few girls that I could tell had been "overserved" and just wanted so badly to go hug them and say let's go home! I think the mom instincts begin to kick in on all accounts. At one point our group of girls attracted a young man who began to dance with us, and I turned to my friend Sara and asked "who is that?" She turns to me and slurs "I don't know, but he's beautiful." To which I died laughing, because let me tell you he was not beautiful! At that point I did wish I had beer goggles on because life is just a little more fun once in awhile through foggy beer goggles.

One interesting thing that comes with pregnancy that I find pretty hilarious is that it is like people are wearing beer goggles towards you. And with that comes the fake compliments. Towards the end people feel so bad for you as you waddle around they start to tell you what I call flompliments - fake compliments that they make up because they feel so awkward staring at you. It includes things like "you're glowing," (um, wow this chic is sweating up a storm), that you are "carrying it really well" (wow, had no idea what an extra 75 pounds would look like on you), or the best, "you're about to pop!" (I can't believe this child hasn't exited your body, I'm freaked out that you are going to get even an inch bigger, stop growing, yowza). I was told with my first child that I was about to pop from about 7 months and on, so this one gets really fun.

It doesn't end with strangers though, even my husband feels so bad for me he tells me fompliments too. They include things like, "your arms still look really fit" (but the rest of you scares me, scares me to the core), "you're still moving around really well" (it puzzles me how you're getting around, you gigantic cow), or the best/most awkward "you can't really tell from behind" (so turn around because I need to visualize you normal!). Even though I am really not showing much yet the fompliments started with the hubby last night. Laying in bed together and cuddling, Zac proceeds to tell me that I smell like "one of our old apartments." Ummm. Pregnant Pause. We lived in a gross apartment when we first got married and a not much better duplex after that, both of which smelled vaguely of frat parties, so I'm not sure what to take from this. The truth is my hubby is darling and so sweet and I had put on perfume that I used to wear when we first got married (Coolwater- the kind you buy at Walgreens when you're in the 8th grade, yes I wore this until about 2 years ago, when I majorly upgraded by buying Juicy Coutoure at TJ Maxx), so he meant that I smelled like when we first got married, but the whole thing had the air of the fake pregnancy compliments about it.

My friend the mailman

Today I get to head down to Miami for one of my dearest friends' Bachelorette party! It's going to be so fun and I have been looking forward to this for weeks!

Since moving to Florida my social schedule hasn't been exactly packed. Not that I was such a party animal before in Texas but....well actually I kind of was. Brooks and I were involved in the church, he went to a preschool, I had so many sweet friends, great neighbors, and I was in Junior League, so we had something to do pretty much every day. It's such a big change when you move somewhere, and after all the hustle and bustle of unpacking boxes you are just sitting there starting at your 17 month old and I swear he's thinking, "Mom where did all your friends go? This is kind of boring."

Right when we moved into our house, I kind of started a bad habit of ordering things online just so the nice mailman would ring my bell and I would have someone to talk to. This is just a tad embarrassing when you realize what you're doing. But Mike the Mailman is so friendly! What's even more sad is I know everything about his life story thanks to some supplies for the Bachelorette party this weekend, my J. Crew swimsuit, Brooks' new Toms shoes and a few books from my grandpa. Mike is a middle aged mailman that's anything but boring. He actually competes in body building competitions on the weekends and boy would you know by looking at him in his uniform. Yowza! (Lonely, very lonely and bored housewife). Actually, I find his uniform a little bit distracting because it is literally skintight on his body, like a joke Halloween stripper mailman uniform. I racked my brain for ideas on how I could get a picture of this but I concluded that a) he would realize how creepy I am and we could no longer be best buddies and b) that really wouldn't be fair to my good friend, and at this point I only have like 3 friends here so I really can't jeopardize anything.

Another thing that has happened as a result of my becoming a reclusive cat lady is that I have started becoming increasingly and alarmingly invested in my TV shows. They are, after all, my extended family. I watch Guliana and Bill with Guliana Rancic from the E! news show, and their struggle to have a baby is played out on the show, and when they announced they were pregnant via surrogate on the episode last week I was a bawling gross mess. I actually called my husband AT WORK and interrupted him to tell him the news. He says "Ummm...that's great babe. Ok I'll be home soon." Probably said to himself "Note to self, buy my wife friends, this is a new low." You know how in the 50s and 60s your grandmother wouldn't even dream of bothering your grandpa at work, it was just unheard of? I'm calling up there to tell my husband news on my favorite TV shows! Yikes.

My final side effect of being friendless for the beginning of this move is Wendy. Oh Wendy! Wendy is my best friend at the grocery store. She's about 132 years old (seriously I think she's at least 98), and we are somehow on the exact same grocery schedule, so we chat at least a few times a week. Either that or Wendy is stalking me and waits in her car for me to go into Publix and then "just happens to be there too." Wendy has already taught me a few things about couponing, how to check if the avocados are ripe for eating, and how to make a homemade bath treatment for Brooks' diaper rash. This vixen is hilarious and I can't help but wonder if I'm turning into her. First, she travels with a fanny pack and I can't help but think that's just practical. I've been behind her in line and she whips out her coupons and checkbook like she's on Price is Right and the clock is ticking down. Her hands are free to expressively explain to me how as you get older you may lose your flexibility but not your sex drive. Like I said, Wendy is a vixen. (Any single male readers in their 80s living in Weston, FL? Contact me and I will hook you up with Wendy, you won't regret it).

I know that I will eventually make great friends here who I will be devastated to leave someday, and I really have already made a few great ones. I am one of those people who will probably wear you down so much with my cookies or cake pops, or oversharing of information or incessant calls about how Guliana is pregnant via surrogate, it's easier for you to just say we are friends than to fight it. When I went to a first lunch with one of the sweet girls who I have become friends with through our husbands working together, I was so excited I talked her ear off for 2 1/2 hours and I'm pretty sure I told her about my vaginal labor. Like, details. Sorry Jessica!!

Well I should wrap this puppy up. There's a new episode of Guliana and Bill I need to watch before leaving for Miami, and I think Mike is dropping by with the fanny pack I ordered!

I'm a mom

Hi dear readers, I apologize for my absence, I am just now recovered from what I can only describe as a slow death for the last 10 days. The hubster and I were so sick, my mom took our baby this past Sunday and despite getting pretty much zero lovey time together, all we could do is lay next to each other, blow snot in each other's t-shirts and weakly discuss whether we should watch a marathon of that Boss Undercover show or It's Sunny in Philadelphia. It was brutal, and I'm just glad to be on the other side now.

Well readers, in the time that has passed, something big happened. I'm not exactly sure when, but it happened. I became a mom. I know, you are all thinking, wow. Her baby is like 16 months old. If she didn't know this already she really needs to cut back on her day drinking. But it was a very fun, easy transition for me when Brooks was born (besides the first 3 months, which I don't remember literally at all and refer to as "the fog," but that's normal I hear). I thought that I hadn't really changed at all from the Sarah "before," the gal who loves being up to date on the latest fashion, what is happening with Brad and Angelina (really Brad, you need to marry her? Haven't you done enough? Just get back with Jennifer and I'll forgive you in a decade, maybe). I'm the one who loves a cold margarita on a Friday night and being able to pull out the party trick back bend at a bar.

I will tell you how I know, but only if we keep this between us. It's embarrassing. I found mom panties undies undergarments vajayjay keppers underwear! (what's a cool hip name for underwear?) And the worst part is, they belong to me!

I'm really not sure how this happened. Back to the day drinking. But seriously, we have been living in Florida over a month now, and it's been a really hectic move and couple of months. I was doing laundry last night, folding about eight loads that backed up when we were sick, and finally feeling coherent and level-headed for the first time in weeks, noticed an enormous blob of tan Lycra stuck to the dish towel. What is this, I thought. Did my mom spend the night recently? Is Zac bringing home old lady panties and putting them in the laundry to keep me on my toes? Oh no, I realized. They're mine.

The memories came flooding back of the day it happened. I was in Forever21, buying a few new dresses because, after 9 months of running my GD ass off, I had finally gotten to 5 lbs away from my pre-baby weight. (When people tell me "it takes 9 months to put it on, it'll take 9 months to work it off," with a smile and a wink, I want to gouge them in the eyes and rip that wink off their face). I was feeling practically anorexic as I sauntered around Forever21, thinking that all the high school girls were probably wondering who the model was in the College Station Forever21. I had just started fixing my hair again for the first time in probably a year, and miraculously, I didn't have a spec of throw up on me. I was a marvel to see. Or so I thought.
I guess God gives us this spectrum of confidence to keep us going, but it sure is rough when you realize what the reality is. I must have had 100 dresses on my arm when I waltzed into the Forever21 dressing room, and as it's a store for 12-14 year olds, they only let you take in 6 at a time, so I meticulously separated them and bounced in with my first 6 items.

Much to my shock and dismay, not a single thing in my first 6 fit my Gisele-like body. I was shocked. My stomach rumbled as I gruffly swung open the door to grab the next batch, and I figured that was a fluke. I was starving, but I had to plow forward. Brooks was only at the Mother's Day out for 2 more hours and it had taken me an hour to do my hair, this was no time to think about the Aunt Annie's Pretzels I could smell from the mall.

What followed was like a sad TV show on Bravo about the girl who has body dismorphia, except mine was in a less "oh my gosh, that's so sad" way and in a more, "get a grip on reality girlfriend" way. Only 2 or 3 items in the batch of 100 dresses even went on my body, let alone looked like something that my husband would walk around with me in public wearing. I didn't realize it, but despite the numbers on the scale, my body had changed forever. Only moms know this, and I reflected on what one of the strength coaches my hubby worked with at Texas A&M had told me when I was pregnant months ago. As I sat sobbing like a hot mess in Forever21, I remembered him telling me that the body of a pregnant woman was like a transformer, and your hips have to actually expand to get the baby out during labor, and after that, they are forever larger and your body is never really the same. Since I was able to squat Brooks out in a matter of minutes (seriously it was like a National Geographic special) I figured my hips were twice their former size, and who knows what my vajayjay had stretched to. (Good thing I know to tell the doctor about the extra stitch. Message me if you want to know more). I know this is being a smidge dramatic but it was a nightmare.

Before that day, I don't think I'd ever walked into Forever21 and not bought a single thing. I'd always found a scarf or dress that caught my fancy, but then again, that was in my pre-baby hips days. You see, I was waiting for this day, and I had saved the money I was making from my side business making cake pops, to buy clothes for my new and hard-earned Gisele  mom body. But I was a bitter woman that day, and muttered stuff under my breath about Forever21 being a cult and changing their sizes on me, as I made a quick exit and a beeline to Aunt Annie's, where I knew I still fit.

After two pretzels with icing a pretzel and a diet coke, I decided this was no time to feel sorry for myself, and that I needed to leave the mall with something that made me feel good about myself and getting back down to the weight I had targeted. I had worked really hard after all, sometimes even refusing ice cream at night in bed while my hot hubby indulged! With only 45 minutes left in my Brooks-free mommy time, I walked into Macy's, and I'm not proud of what I bought, but it is who I am now. I bought mom underthings. A lot of them. All different kinds too. I was new at this, I didn't know how it worked. I didn't have time to try them on, so I just grabbed a plethora, tried not to get the grease from my pretzels on them, and headed to the church to collect my baby.

My sweet baby. You would think that I would be mad at the sweet Brooks for what he had done to my body. But again, God has a plan. He makes you love their darling faces so much, from the first second you squat them out, that you accept that after nursing your body sucked your boops back into your body, and what was left was a sad sack of clementines with squiggly lines on them and hips that don't lie. You accept that you are never going to weigh that number again, not ever, unless you give up McFlurry's all together, and then that's a life that's really not worth living isn't it? Because it's all worth it.

I love being a mom, even more than I thought I would. It's so rewarding I almost can't stand it. When he naps a long time I miss him, and I go in his room and stroke his hair like a creepo, willing him to wake up and play with me. Of course I have days when I text my husband things like "This is it, no more kids, and you better be bringing me home 1 million dollars and a Ferrari because this is the hardest damn job on the planet." But for the most part, it is so much fun and I feel so lucky I get to do it.

The mom underwear did help things, and it even got me back into these fabulous Juicy Coutoure jean leggings, the last pair of jeans that wouldn't will themselves over my junk in the trunk. The only problem was, the jeggings needed a thong, and you could see enormous mom underwear lines, so they were retired. I framed them and they know hang in my closet with all my vintage Hermes bags and Jimmy Choo shoes.

As a final note, I decided to try the back bend, alone in my room. This old mom has still got it.

Diet Schmiet

In the light that we are going to try to expand our family sometime soon, I figured it would be in my best interest to begin to try to eat healthy and get in great shape beforehand. Why not board the fat pregnant train at my fittest? I'm so smart.

So tonight I decided to measure out my ice cream. I don't have ice cream every single night. It's somewhere between 1 time a week and every single night. Much closer to the every single night side than I'm willing to admit to my blog and to myself. Have you ever measured out a serving size of ice cream? If you want to be so incredibly depressed, like Sarah Machlachan on the animal commercials depressed, please measure out a half cup (what the carton "suggests" I eat) of ice cream. Here is what it looks like:

If you're thinking the bowl looks empty well you would be right. If you're thinking the spoon looks like it's already had a few licks....well you'd also be right about that. Your attention to detail is astonishing dear reader. You see my issue is that I usually have at least 4-5 bites out of the carton before I serve my bowl. I have realized those bites are what a serving size is. So before I've even planted my rear on the couch to eat ice cream and watch the Real Housewives, I've already eaten an entire serving searching for the cookie dough bites. It is abandoned puppies depressing.

I guess this is pain for beauty. (I hate that saying. I can hear a Chinese nail lady saying it to me as she waxes my upper lip and I wince). You see my next pregnancy I just know I'm going to look like this:

One thing I've noticed is that when I'm trying to eat healthier, all I can think about is the unhealthy stuff. Even though I'm trying to tell myself that I need an apple, all my brain can think is whether I should get a McDonald's cone or a Wendy's frosty for the drive home.

We had some visitors recently and got the chance to go out to eat at 2 fun and fancy restaurants on the beach in Ft. Lauderdale. I always head into these places thinking, I will get roasted salmon and steamed broccoli, avoid the bread plate and guzzle ice water! Gosh I must be glowing, I continue to myself. 20 minutes later I'm the person elbows deep in the bread, slathering on (and asking for more) butter, and preparing to order the risotto because "I just barely ever eat risotto." I'm playing it real fast and loose with the "barely ever eat" phrase.

Side note on bread: One thing I have noticed in Florida restaurants is that the bread is very hard. Do older people like hard bread? There are a lot of 60 and ups down here. Are they all requesting stale bread? What's a girl got to do to get a soft buttered croissant or 5 before her meal?

Despite my shortcomings and love of risotto and bread, I figured a good spot to start all this healthiness would be a trip to Whole Foods. This is one of my favorite things to do, walk around these upscale type grocery stores and peruse all the food. Everyone there seems rich and fancy, and I too want to be rich and fancy, even if just from 3-3:30 on a random Monday. I imagine my name is Evelyn and my little one is Frederick (I have another on the way, to be named after an artist I admire), and we have just come from his music appreciation class. Brooks is half fluent in mandarin already, obviously, and I am head to toe in Gucci and look fabulous.

The reality: I'm covered in the squirt baby food that Brooks just exploded onto himself and me as I put him in the cart, and I'm pretty sure he has a poop, but the wipes and diaper are all the way back in the car and I don't realize it until we are in the store. I guess he will have to wait to be changed in the popped open trunk until we are done. I'm not positive I put deodorant on before I left so the odor we are giving off for a 10 foot perimeter around us is musky to say the least. Fancy it is.

They didn't have a Whole Foods in the town we were in before so I was excited to go. Big mistake. I guess the last time I went was in college when apparently it didn't matter that the 12 oz of blueberries were $8.99. What do they do to make this stuff organic, grow it in Gold? Now that I'm a sensible mom on a budget, I walked around aghast at the prices and thinking, we can deal with pesticides and hormones. We'll be fine! Brooks and I filled up on samples as our afternoon snack (sneers from the organic cheese lady as we made round 2 didn't help) and I picked a few things to buy so I wouldn't have to trudge out like white trash with nothing. It's not the Gap, I reminded myself, you can't walk into a grocery store and not buy anything.

The nice man bagging the groceries noticed my choice of (organic) blueberries dipped in yogurt (white chocolate), and remarked "these are so good." 'I know!' I told him, thinking about how Brooks and I would devour the whole thing on the ride home.

"Although," he said, "anything is good covered in chocolate, even a finger!" I guess he pinned me, the girl who would eat anything as long as it's covered in chocolate. I can't argue with facts.