Goats and Dogs

I have a miniature homestead. I have chickens and ducks (who are currently freeloading and not giving eggs), a goat who just gave birth to two kids and we will start milking again in the next few days, and a garden that I will start putting my indoor starts into the ground hopefully this next weekend. It's not a very big piece of land, not even a quarter of an acre, but it's big enough for what we use it for. 

The goat kids are about four days old. They were born this past Saturday, March 12, 2016. Yesterday I got the scare of my life.

I prepared for the arrival of the kids by reinforcing the goat fence with chicken wire to keep the kids in and my dog, George, out. He's a pit bull and we've had problems with him and livestock in the past. Our dairy goat, Zara, is large enough for him to think twice about messing with, but anything smaller than that and he thinks that it is fair game to play with. George is fine around people he knows and/or people who can and will be firm with him, but he plays very rough and allow him a bit of leeway and he doesn't know when to stop.  I apparently did not secure the fencing as well as I thought I did. The chicken wire was not strong enough or tall enough to deter George.

I was gone for about 90 minutes on Tuesday morning, getting groceries from Costco and Fred Meyer. When I got out of my car my neighbor told me that while I had been gone George had gotten into the goat pen and had attacked the baby buck, Denver. She had been alerted to this by Denver's screams. Thank any god or gods or universal power listening that she was home. She was able to get George off of Denver before he did any permanent damage. 

Denver is fine, if quite shaken. Zara has signs of trying to fight him off, scratches around her head indicating she she head butted him several times in an attempt to stop him. According to my neighbor Zara and the other kid, Seattle, were hiding behind the goat shed when she found them. 

My sister works at the goat dairy where I got Zara from, and she was kind enough to come down and make sure that Denver was OK. She even brought down a shot of penicillin for him. 

George was confined to the house for the rest of the day. I blocked off the doggy door and he is still only allowed outside while supervised. I went and got some extra heavy duty 4 ft high 14 gauge welded metal fencing to reinforce the goat fence, and we put that up with a heavy duty staple gun last night, but I won't be comfortable leaving George home alone until I have it up with fencing nails. I got some last night, but they were the wrong size. I used the staple gun just to get it up, and I will put cinder blocks around the bottom if I have to go anywhere to make sure George can't burrow underneath, but I would really just rather not go anywhere today. 

I do blame myself for this, George was just acting like a dog. I should have taken better precautions before the kids were born. It is a mistake that I am glad did not have more tragic consequences and that I will not make again. We adopted George four years ago, and he is a very big part of our family. I never wanted to believe he could do something like this, even by accident. My guess is that he was trying to play with the baby goat, and he got very carried away and instinct took over. I will not allow myself to be that negligent again.

Elaboration

Perhaps I have time for a bit more of a post now.


I feel very depressed today. I don't think its just because of the weight gain, although I'm sure that has something to do with it.

My best friend got married a week ago. We have been best friends since we were two years old, we've lived together, seen each other through some of the most horrendous and traumatizing things imaginable. We have stayed best friends across thousands of miles (before the internet was big and way before cell phones were so common), across oceans, across continents. We have always been best friends. I think of her as closer to me than a sister. She's my other half (other 3/4, really), I don't know if I would have survived this long if it hadn't been for her.

She didn't tell me she was getting married. She didn't even tell me she was seeing anyone. Most of the information I have regarding any of this is second hand because I've received only two emails from her since I found out she was getting married, the night she hopped on a cross-Atlantic flight to meet up with her beau (who lives in Europe) to get married. Apparently she has been involved with this person for almost five years, and I never even knew their name. She lived with me for one of those years, helped me through an entire pregnancy, and she never said a word.

Our relationship has always been based on trust and a knowledge that if one of us needed the other, the other would be there, come hell or high water. I feel like my existence has been shaken to its core.

I want to make something very clear: I am not upset that she got married. I am not upset that after staying away from any sort of romantic involvement of any sort for as long as I have ever known her, she found someone she decided she wanted to share her life with. As long as this is making her happy, I am happy for her, and I will support her.

I am upset that she never told me. As close as we are, as much as we share, she was afraid to tell me. I am told that she was afraid of how I would react because she has always been so a-romantic and a-sexual. I'm disappointed in myself for whatever I did or however I acted that led her to believe that I would be anything less than supportive of her, and I am heartbroken that she did not feel that she could share this with me.

She returned from Europe a few days ago, and I haven't heard from here since right before she boarded the plane to come home. She won't answer my texts, emails, or phone calls, and I'm very worried about her.

I want to show her the new baby goats, I want to hug her and tell her that everything is OK and that I still love her. I want to make sure that she knows that nothing she could do could ever change that.

Mental Status

My weight in this morning told me that I have gained back five pounds. I haven't weighed in for several days, but this is very disappointing for me. It is most likely a fluctuation in water weight, but it is still disappointing.  I haven't been getting my minimum 10k steps every day, and I can tell it has not only been affecting my weight goals, but my mental state as well. I have not given my daily walking its proper due in terms of my mental health. 

I'm exhausted this morning. I find that when I don't get enough physical activity I wake up exhausted.  I didn't get much physical exercise over the weekend, due to several factors. We've been expecting my goat to go into labor for the last week, and I've been trying to stay as close to home as possible so that I would be there for it. My goat. Zarahemla (Zara for short) went into labor on Saturday while I was at rehearsal for the Skagit Opera Chorus (of course she did!). I checked on her every hour on Friday night until I went to bed, and then constantly on Saturday morning until I left for my rehearsal. 

My rehearsal ran late, and by the time I looked at my phone I had missed three calls from my husband in rapid succession. By the time I called him back on of the kids had already been born. I rushed home, but by the time I got there the other kid had made it out. I wasn't there for it, but Zara did beautifully. Now we've got two healthy La Mancha kids, one buck and one doe, and they seem to be thriving. 

Here they are just an hour or so after they were born on Saturday. March 12, 2016:

My daughter Kheeda claimed naming rights, and we ended up with the doe named Seattle and the buck named Denver (my daughter is both a Seahawk and a Bronco fan).

Two days of trying to stay close to home was too many for me. I like to try and walk to and from my rehearsals, a two mile walk each way. I wasn't able to do that this weekend due to the kidding or last weekend because I was down with a cold bad enough to keep me from rehearsal. 

I am back to the mental block I have where if I stop doing something for even a small amount of time I will stop doing it altogether. I like to walk, but if I don't do it every single day, I will stop doing it completely. I've gone almost a week without hitting my minimum 10k step goal. I have to get better. 

Small goal tonight: Take my dog for a walk. 

I wanted to write more, but I seem to be experiencing a brain fart. Possibly more later.

Fall

I feel very depressed and disheartened today. I've fallen off the wagon a bit, eaten things I shouldn't have. Which one caused which I don't know, and it might not even matter. They seem to be a cyclical cause and effect loop, but I am determined that it will end before the end of the day. I will do better tomorrow. No. I will do better starting right now.

I put on my pedometer this morning only for it to tell me it was out of juice, so right out of bed the omens were ill. I remembered to take all of my medications this morning, a definite win, but forgot to eat breakfast before leaving the house.

Eating breakfast at home is essential for me to have a good day food wise. Once I get hungry enough to remember I forgot to eat breakfast I am hungry enough to rationalize going through the Taco Bell drive thru, which I did this morning. 500 delicious and horrible calories and way too many carbs of a beefy Fritos Burrito to start me out for the day.

I've got good excuses for not remembering to eat before I leave in the morning: I'm trying to get kids ready to leave for school, my medications haven't kicked in yet, I haven't slept very well, there hasn't been any coffee yet. The really unfortunate thing is how habitually these excuses take over, and how easy it is to let them.

It wouldn't have been so bad if I could have gone home after dropping my daughter of at school. Usually we walk since it's only about a half mile, and that helps get the day started. Today, however, I needed to drive.

My goat is due to kid any day, and I needed to make sure that I had everything I needed, which meant a trip to the farm supply store with my car. Moving my youngest from his stroller to his car seat can be a nightmare if he doesn't want to cooperate, and before I've had my coffee in the morning is too early to deal with that, so I decided to just put him in his car seat and go straight from my daughter's school to the farm store, forgetting to eat breakfast before I left.

We had an appointment to meet with a preschool my son might be attending this fall today as well, so we didn't have a chance to get home between places. This is a recipe for bad nutritional choices.

I still hadn't had my coffee after the farm store so I went to a drive thru coffee stand and got a breve... It's not so bad carb wise but it's really heavy in calories, probably around 450.

When I finally got home I was so depressed about it I just couldn't eat lunch. I did eat several girl scout samoas, though, because that makes sense.

Fridays are early release at my daughter's school, so I had to go pick her up two hours earlier than I normally do. My son had decided to fall asleep not long before we needed to leave, and I didn't really want to wake him up, so I put him back in the car seat and took the car to pick up my daughter again instead of walking. That's a complete mile of walking I did not do today.

My snacking habits also got the better of me today: cheese and club crackers. Oh my god cheese and crackers. And sloppy joes on potato bread for dinner.

I'm hoping I didn't blow my calorie budget too high over my limit, especially since I didn't track anything I ate today. I'm positive that my carb intake today is at least twice what I would like it to be.

10 Pound Benchmark

I've lost 10 pounds so far! I weighed in at 240 even this morning! I'm five pounds from my first reward, and I'm almost positive that I'll hit that in the next week. I'd better start thinking about what book I want to order!

I did think of one more reward I want to add to my list. When I hit my goal weight of 160 I want to have my wedding dress altered to fit. It is currently a size 14 from David's Bridal, altered a bit by my amazing mother in law to accommodate my fairly large......boobs. It has a lace up back so it is fairly accommodating in terms of weight fluctuations, but I would like it to fit me at 160 pounds at it's tightest comfortably laced position. I would like to fit me after I lose weight, but I really don't think I want to weight any less than 160 lbs. My family has a dense bone and muscle structure, so at 160 I will probably be at a good dress size to stay at. We might even do a wedding anniversary photo shoot in it next year with my newly altered dress.

I am losing weight pretty rapidly, but I am eating enough. For the first few weeks what I will probably be shedding is water weight. I am hoping that the weight loss will level out after the first 15 pounds or so to a more manageable and healthy level. I would be happy with any weight loss per week at all, but my aim is two pounds per week.  If I can do that, then I can reach my goal weight within a year.

Most health care professionals and diet experts will tell people not to weight themselves more than once a week because weight can fluctuate rapidly due to a lot of factors, but I find that weighing myself every morning before getting ready for the day, before breakfast, before drinking any water, (pretty much sans clothing so I don't have to try and account and adjust for different clothing with different weights. It keeps things a lot simpler) helps keep me motivated. If I'm staying pretty well on track, the scale numbers should decrease slightly every day. I don't mean significant weight loss every day, but either stable weight or just slightly less than the day before is my goal. In addition to helping keep my weight loss motivation up, seeing a smaller number than yesterday can start my day out on a more positive note, and starting a day out well can be the difference between a good day and a bad day sometimes.

Today started out well, and I am hopeful that it will continue to be great.

Weight Until You've Done It

I am going to try, for the millionth time, to lose this extra poundage I've been carrying around with me for the past ten years. I've tried so many different weight loss methods I have begun to despair that I will ever make my goal weight of 160 lbs. I have 85 pounds to lose, and that is no mean feat.

The most success I have ever had with weight loss was with low carbing. I have slight insulin resistance and between that and the celiac's disease carbs have become my mortal enemy. They are like a drug to me. I feel like I am a carbaholic. One is too many and two will never be enough. The ADHD doesn't help with my carb addiction either. Any time I forget to take my medication I am almost helpless against the carbs. My I crave them because my brain thinks that more carbs will mean more focus, which is funny because when I binge on carbs I sometimes have a blood sugar crash, which can put me out of commission for days.

I've done some pretty extreme things in order to lose weight, none of which have worked long term. Low carbing has so far given me the most long term and sustainable results, I lost 35 lbs, going from 263 to 228 in a few months, and I was able to maintain that weight loss for almost two years before I lost sight of my health goals for a while. Even so, I'm still not as heavy as I was at my top weight, 263. Right now I'm 245, which while still too heavy is at least not 263.

This time around, I want to try a different approach. I would like this approach to be completely positive and a lifestyle change instead of just a diet. I know that everyone says that is how it should be, but that is hardly how anyone really sees it when beginning a weight loss attempt.

I tried the hCG diet, which, while effective, really wasn't sustainable weight loss. I lost 20 lbs in a month, but gained it back almost immediately after I stopped the diet "round." Extremes don't seem to be for me.

I've tried going to gyms, I can't ever seem to get myself to go. There is something in my brain that just rebels at doing anything I "should" do. This particular vice of mine has caused a lot of problems in my life. Much of it can be attributed to the ADHD that went unknown for so long and the anxiety caused by any of my other mental health issues, but that doesn't change the fact that this particular problem has lost me jobs, caused me to perform poorly in school. When I am on point I can carry a 3.5 GPA every quarter. When I'm not on point (or, more specifically, not taking my medications) I have trouble getting myself out of bed to go to class, but I digress.

Paying for a gym membership doesn't make sense for me because I start out strong, going several times per week for the first month or so, and then I make one excuse not to go for one day, and I never go again. I seem to be an all or nothing type of person. If I am not going to give something my all, I tend not to give it anything at all.

I do love to walk. When I was a kid I walked everywhere, probably in excess of 10 miles a day. Walked, biked, took the bus. I didn't get my drivers' license until six months after I turned 18, and then it was only because I moved out into the sticks where I had to have a car to get anywhere at all. When I finally got my license, I went from walking 10+ miles per day to just about sedentary. That will screw up a metabolism and no mistake. I gained a lot of weight in a very short period of time. I wasn't paying much attention to my weight due to a lot of factors, but by the time I noticed I was gaining I had already gained more than 50 lbs.

Back to my positive weight loss program. I'm going to try low carbing again, since it seems to be the only method that has ever produced lasting results for me. I'm not worried about any fat content besides trans fat, in fact when I eat a higher saturated fat diet my ADHD symptoms tend to improve and my insulin resistance isn't so much of a problem. I've been using the SparkPeople app, and so far it is really helping me. I have tried several weight loss apps, but I keep going back to SparkPeople. It has a great social aspect and it gives you the option of putting the calories burned during a workout back into the daily calorie budget. I bought a wearable pedometer as well, and I try to make sure that I get at least the recommended 10k steps per day. Normally I try to make it to between 15k and 20k steps. The only issue I'm having so far is converting the steps I take during the day into exercise time on the app, since the app doesn't have a pedometer. It makes my brain work a little, which is a good thing.

Along with the low carbing, I have decided to start giving myself rewards for hitting my weight loss goals. A reward for every 15 lbs lost. Here is my reward goal list so far:

235 lbs - Order a new hard cover Terry Pratchett Discworld novel. I've started collecting the hardcover books because I already have all of the discworld novels in e-book format. I found a store in the UK that sells a series of them with a very nicely illustrated covers, and they don't have dust jackets to lose.

220 lbs - Get my hair cut and colored by my favorite hair stylist.

205 lbs - Buy new bras from Victoria Secret. I know, I know. Brand names expensive blah blah blah, but they are still the most comfortable bras I have ever worn. Totally worth a bit of extra money.

199 lbs - This one is between 15 lbs goals, but I thought that getting below 200 lbs for the first time in 10 years should definitely merit a reward. For getting below 200 lbs I am going to get myself a tattoo. I have a very good friend who does amazing artwork (actually I have several friends who do amazing artwork) that I think will help me with a tattoo design.  This is also the benchmark where I am going to start running.

I have done running before, and I absolutely loved it, but running while still so heavy is bad enough on my knees that I have to stop running after a few weeks. Once I'm below 200 I will try to run again.

190 lbs - I'm going to buy myself a new dress, probably a rockabilly dress I can wear around town.

175 - Get my wedding right resized. Hopefully by then my fingers will have shrunk a bit.

160 - This is my goal weight. When I reach it I will probably celebrate in several ways, but my official "15 lbs" reward will be talking my friend Cate (proprietor of Cate Reed Photography) into doing a photo shoot with me. 

These rewards might change as I think of new things I'd like to do, but maybe I will jut change it from a 15 lb goal to a 10 lb goal to add them in.
I feel like I have something to look forward to now, instead of just getting on the scale and hoping the numbers have gone down. I am hopping that blogging about my weight los journey will be a good motivational tool to stay on track. I hope to use these reward as my light at the end of the tunnel.

The Weight is Excruciating

I seem to be a medical puzzle. Many of my medical issues are either caused by my weight or causing my weight issues. I am approximately 85 lbs overweight, and I have been fighting that number since age 13. My thyroid doesn't seem to work at all, my female hormones seem to have been out of whack since time began, I am severely iron deficient (but not anemic! My doctor is very confused by my blood work sometimes). I've got Celiac's disease which went undiagnosed and untreated until I was 23, and as a direct result I have so many nutrient deficiencies I'm surprised I'm still upright. I've got ADHD, which may or may not be connected to the Celiac's. This wasn't diagnosed until I was in my 24, and has definitely impacted every aspect of my life.

The weight issue seems to be the most obvious one to fix, but I have come to learn that if I don't treat everything else first, weight loss does not happen.

Thyroid: a screwed up thyroid will affect a person's weight. I personally have hypothyroidism, which means that my thyroid does not produce enough hormone to regulate things like my metabolism. Hypothyroidism causes weight gain, and without treatment the weight doesn't go anywhere.

I have been on a medication for my thyroid for more than six years, but by the time I had it diagnosed I was told that my thyroid was scarred and I would have to be on thyroid medication for the rest of my life. Even treated, my thyroid remains a big problem for me.

ADHD: Having untreated ADHD causes crazy carb cravings and an inability to control many impulses, including the one to snack. Combine these two and one gets a desire to snack on high carb (and usually incredibly salty or sweet) foods and an inability to control the urge to snack. Going to the grocery store is always a challenge for me, although being on my medication helps tremendously. I tend to return with things like cheesy snack crackers and potato chips instead of healthier options. At home, I tend to snack, sometimes without even realizing I'm doing it.

Celiac's disease: The catch 22 of having celiac's disease, especially if one is unaware of it for an extended period of time, is the nutrient deficiencies it causes  while being able to cause weight gain at the same time.  The abundance, accessibility, and nutritional value of processed food in the US has never been my friend.  The celiac's disease causes my intestines to stop absorbing nutrients, and as a result I have more than enough to eat but several nutrient deficiencies. I have never actually  had a doctor say it, but these nutrient deficiencies have probably caused my body to be in an almost constant state of starvation, which causes it to try and store as much food as possible in fat stores, causing weight gain. I have more than enough to eat, but before I was diagnosed with celiac's disease I wasn't getting a whole lot of nutrition from anything I ate. The inability to maintain a healthy weight, either being overweight or underweight, can be a sign a celiac's. It is very frustrating.

I have severe depression and PTSD (no, I wasn't in the military, but PTSD can be caused by any sort of serious trauma). My eating habits have never been very good, but when I hit a really low point in my depression or have a very vivid PTSD episode, the first thing I tend to stop caring about is when and what I'm eating. Feeling better is that only thing that matters, even if it is only a temporary feeling. Comfort foods are a huge problem for me. Besides banning them from my house (a difficult endeavor with two kids in the house), I can only limit my exposure to them so much, but I am trying.

I feel like right now I have all of my known medical conditions under some semblance of control, so it might be time for another weight loss attempt. Get it while the getting's good, right? I honestly don't know how long any period of emotional stability is going to last for me, so I am going to try to take advantage of it. Hopefully it will last for a few months at least.