Of Cauliflower Brains and Muffin Dragons

Not a great day yesterday. I was having funny burning abdominal pain after standing for a few minutes and feared that I had overdone it the day before by doing such outrageous activities as rising from bed, sitting in the living room with visitors, and putting dishes in the dishwasher! I had to resort to the codeine and ice packs and I was pretty depressed that such little activity might have been too much for me a week after the surgery. In the evening I got a call from my friend Marie, an ICU nurse and someone who had her own incisional issues when she had a cesarean, and she suggested the burning was a reaction of nerves that had been stretched during the surgery. In other words, I might be having this pain no matter what I had done, which was a relief. Besides giving myself the permission to take the codeine when I need it, I am also learning to appreciate ice packs, besides for the ab, for my shoulder muscles which have been spasming, probably from being overused to shift myself in bed and also from being moved when unconscious from operating table to stretcher to bed. The things you learn...

Told you I was going to be obsessed with my abs! I actually wrote a post yesterday but it never got past the draft stage due to my mood --- it just fried any coherant thoughts I might have had.

I was damned if I was getting off the couch for the whole evening, so we needed something super easy for dinner. Fuzzboy popped a frozen President's Choice veggie lasagna in the oven and a cookiesheet full of the wickedly delicious and amazingly simple Carmelized Cauliflower that I found on Orangette's blog. It was so good, it was hard for the two of us to not eat the whole head in one meal. It more than made up for the lasagna's disappointing blandness and lack of any recognizable vegetables, except for a few - sigh - semi-soft carrot chunks. PC, hang your head in shame, would it really have killed your profit margin to add a vegetable or some herbs? Ever heard of nutmeg or basil?

For dessert we had a muffin and some Starbuck's decaf espresso blend. Thank god my coffee tooth has returned, it's been kind of weak since the surgery. The only coffee I could take was lattes and well, while Cinnamon Dolce Lattes are very yummy (Thanks Tiff) they are barely coffee. My running buddy Barb sent over these lowfat banana chocolate muffins as a get well present... it was sweet of her, but it's a bit of a double edged sword for me: really tasty and there's a dozen, which would have made about 2 snacks for me in the old days.

My reaction to having one muffin was like when I eat anything, but magnified: The old dragon in me wakes up and roars "Moooore!!!" That's where I am so grateful for the discipline and repetition of working my OA stuff over the past 3 years. I was able to fold up the paper wrapper (after assiduously scraping every crumb off, of course) and say "yup, I feel like more, but it's not healthy to have another right now. Get used to it dragon." He went back to sleep, but then before bed I had another muffin instead of my usual yogurt. I did it with Fuzz, a normal eater, I didn't sneak it (I am the classic sneak eater). If I have more than one today, the rest of the muffins get banished to his staff room, where they will be devoured by hoards of drooling teachers in nanoseconds. The philosophic and spiritual support of my programme gives me this strength where I wasn't able to access it before.

I know there are some people who question my definition of abstinence from compulsive overeating when I eat an extra x, y, or chocolate, but it has worked so far. I find that by letting go of that rigid diet mentality and self punitive thoughts (ie "you shouldn't have eaten that") seems to work where years of either being "on" or "off" diets only made me sicker.
Works for me.