D423 Putting on a Smiling Face Every Day

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Sometimes I feel like I need to put on a smiling face here at my blog to keep up the good news about GAPS. I don't want a total stranger to stop by and think the worst about GAPS. But the truth is I don't feel ecstatically happy all the time. I am definitely in a better mood a greater percentage of the time, I'm no longer feeling miserable and having anxiety attacks and needing to take Kava Kava, which I truly believe is a direct result of doing the Gut and Psychology Syndrome diet, but I still have days where I don't feel so good.

Like yesterday. I worked from home, but I was just tired all day long. I'd gotten to bed around 11pm, and awoke early when my husband jumped out of bed at 3am. With my eyes closed, I saw a flash of light, then he leaped to a sitting position. I don't know why, but I thought the house was on fire and the flash of light that I saw was flames flickering. Well, you can imagine that woke me up completely. So I got up and thought I may as well get started on my day. By 5:30am I was just so sleepy that I decided to go back to bed for a while. My husband called three times while I was trying to sleep and finally I was up by 8am and got started working. It was a rough day, for I felt tired the whole time. I ended up working only six hours and decided I couldn't do anymore and crawled into bed and slept for another couple hours. When I got up, I still felt tired.

I decided to make a point to take a detox bath, using Epsom salts. I ordered a fifty pound bag from Azure the last time I ordered, but my husband stored them outside so I haven't had them readily available in my bathroom. That just makes it harder when I have to go fetch the Epsom salts, instead of just pouring into the tub.

I was in a funk much of the day. I've been a little bitter lately because my mom has been feeling down and stressed out. She has gotten off the phone with me hastily enough times that I've learned my lesson and I am doing my best to say nothing at all to her that will cause her more stress. But I have to say it does make me feel very bitter and resentful. I try my best to be there for her, I guess I am younger and should be more mature. Wait, did I just say I should be more mature? That's hilarious. My mother should be more mature. Anyway. I just feel a real disconnect from my family of origin because I feel we are on different paths.

I know it's not normal to be happy happy happy happy every single minute of the day, but I have these expectations for myself. I would like to be happy and cheerful all the time. But it seems like for the last couple of months, I have just been a little bummed out. Actually it seems to have started at the time when I wrote about being worried about self sufficiency.

We have been getting really tired of the responsibility of our dairy goats. After all, my husband, my oldest son and I cannot drink the milk. We considered getting rid of them, but then decided they are a commodity if “anything happens” decided to keep them bought another squeeze load of hay (64 bales). It was a superb price and I was so happy, until I realized the reason is was so cheap is because the quality of the hay was so bad that we have to use twice as much. Goats are not the “eat anything and everything” animals they are depicted to be. They are actually quite picky. They are curious, and they will pick up a tin can and mouth it, like a curious baby. And that is how they got the reputation for eating anything. Ours pick through the flakes of hay and leave the big tough stems – which this squeeze load was filled with – on the ground. Their pen is getting higher and higher and higher with stems that they won't dare eat. The milkers have all dropped their production almost in half. I was getting at least 6 pounds of milk daily, now I'm lucky to get three.

My husband is too busy working to do anything more for the goats than throw hay in the morning and I have been left with doing all the other chores. Thank God my hands have healed and are not wracked with pain. I am also the only one doing housework and having a hard time keeping up with it.

My husband took on too many jobs at once in December, and underestimated the time it would take on each and is taking a beating financially on the jobs, but he is working hard to get them done. I am grateful that he is being responsible and working hard. But for a while he was working 15 hours a day,  driving 3 or 4 and getting only 3 to 5 hours of sleep a night and I was worried sick about him. He's lost thirty-five pounds, which is not a bad thing, he was overweight, but I am worried that he lost the weight by not eating or maybe his condition has worsened and he doesn't want to tell me. He's still not interested in doing GAPS and continues to eat processed foods.

He is getting more sleep in the last week, ever since he caught himself falling asleep driving!! I kept warning him of this but I guess he had never experienced it. All I have to do is get 5 hours of sleep two nights in a row and I'm falling asleep driving, so I have to be really careful to get plenty of sleep.

With all the work he's been doing, and the late hours, I have had trouble sleeping because he's not home. So it hasn't been a good combination.

I guess a lot has been going on… I was thinking maybe I need to incorporate something else GAPS, like try the probiotics or something. But maybe it's just that a lot has been going on. It doesn't help that we are in a financial crunch. I am trying to figure out how to get by without taking a draw from my husband's business and that by itself is just depressing.

Well, hopefully today will be a better day. Thanks for reading all the way through, if you did.

One more thing. As I weigh myself on the first of each month, I weigh 176.2# this morning. On January 1st I weighed 177#. I did resume eating fruit (usually not more than one piece a day) this month, and had the peanut butter [affiliate link] frosting treat a couple of times, and I didn't eat only three meals a day as often as in December. But that's okay. I was hungry. I think I can still work at eating less at some meals. I'm not overeating until I'm stuffed, thank God, but I could probably stop sooner. I'm just observing the process… basically it appears I can more or less maintain my weight by eating from the full GAPS food list as I wish. Tomorrow is the celebration at work, and I'll be planning some baked goods for Valentine's Day, but other than that, maybe for February I can try to back off on fruit and snacky things. I've also been wondering if I can start up with some kind of exercise again. I have been walking faster through the halls at work, I think I used to lolly-gag my way around.

Have a good day!

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