A friend shared this article with me.  Evidently cereal does equal poison, as Mike has been saying.

I had a dream the other night that I ate a bowl of cereal for breakfast, and I didn’t know how I was going to tell Mike.  Luckily I didn’t actually eat cereal, but instead just ate a whole bunch of other crap that set him off on a tangent.  He detests emotional eating, doesn’t think that food equals love and also thinks that people shouldn’t be bothered by other people’s diets.  For instance, if someone offers you food and you say, no thanks, that should be acceptable, but it so rarely is.  I agree with him, but I do occasionally treat myself…even though I’m aware that I’m not a dog and don’t need to be treated.

That said, our discussion about food led to a big, important question.  Would you rather eat a gallon of ice cream or a box of Cap’n Crunch with Crunchberries?  (Mike came up with that one.  That is not a cereal that tempts me. But no cereal beats ice cream.)  I told him, no contest, ice cream, but if you added a bag of Doritos into the equation I would let that entire tub of ice cream melt on the counter.  We had a pretty heated argument about this—evidently he really likes his Cap’n Crunch.  You can argue it’s disordered eating if you are craving entire boxes of stuff, but isn’t it better to crave it than to actually eat it?

Anyway, the other thing Mike said that stuck in my head the rest of the day was that he can’t make me want to eat better, I have to do that myself.  He feels like I talk about it, and then I don’t do it.  That’s true.  You readers are well aware.  Then I went home and realized that none of my shorts from last summer quite fit…so it’s really, truly time to do something about it.  Yesterday was a great food day.  I ate exactly what I planned to (other than a small fiasco involving a batch of hard boiled eggs that were not quite hard boiled) and felt good at the end of the day.  I had my oatmeal in the morning, a piece of cheese post-workout (not ideal, but delicious), salad with two cans of tuna for lunch, almonds for a snack, and sauerkraut with bratwurst, side salad, for dinner.  No grains after my morning oatmeal, which Mike would be pretty proud of.  I’m going to try a similar plan today.  We’re going with salad with grilled chicken for lunch and dinner is pork with broccoli.  I’d love to fit into the shorts I own…and I realize though I love bread and can easily tear up an entire basket of it, I can also go without grains at meals and feel really good as long as I get enough protein.

So that’s the lead in into the real meat of this blog post.  Oatmeal.  I started posting my oatmeal as a spoof of other oatmeal posting blogs, but some of my actual friends have told me they are inspired by my oatmeal.  One told me her boyfriend was trying to figure out how to eat oatmeal with more protein…um…add protein powder!  Poof, problem solved.  (I’m a genius.  You’re welcome.)  I’m also working on a logo for this blog feature. (By that I mean I have been bugging a friend about making me a logo.  I’m sure she’s just busy.)

Steel cut oatmeal with blackberries.  I go through steel cut phases.  It is a totally different experience, but I feel even more virtuous eating it—it is even less processed than rolled oats so your body has to work really hard to digest it and you stay full for hours…even days?

Look at that strawberry juice.  I love that stuff.  I like to freeze and then thaw the strawberries just for that alone…

You can tell this is too watery.  I like the overnight oats best with yogurt, but sometimes I try to go lower calorie and use water.  It rarely turns out as well, particularly when I add too much water. Oh well.

This is the opposite of watery—so thick and creamy looking!  I would eat the crap out of this bowl.

Look!  This is COOKED oatmeal, readers.  Sometimes on the weekends I have the patience to make hot oatmeal.  It was a nice change.

And this was with flavored yogurt, as evidenced by the pink color.  The blackberries were on sale awhile back, 10 containers for $10 so I stocked up.  They were delicious, though they are all now gone.

And another bowl of cooked oatmeal.  With perhaps too much strawberry juice…this was like oatmeal soup.  Oh well.  Live and learn.

There you have it!  I want to try peaches soon—that was a great suggestion from my earlier post, and I do love peaches.  Peaches are one of the best parts of the living in the south, actually.

So…ice cream, cereal, or chips?  What’s your guilty pleasure? 

Holding a baby is like holding a cat, except the baby WANTS to be held. 

We picked up food at PW Pizza to take over to our friend’s house to hang out.  It was BUSY there (there being the same building where we got married!) and we ran into Ann from Moulin Events.  She is awesome!  She said there were four events happening that night.  Anyway, we got two pizzas and a salad and headed over to Jon and Laura’s.  Laura naturally made homemade dessert, not one type of cookies, but two.  The woman is ridiculous.  In a good way.

Benjamin has grown a little.  He’s not quite as scary to hold.

I made Chris take some pictures of me then.  That’s really why we went over—I needed more baby pictures for the blog ;)  Jon and Laura who?  Laura called me the "baby whisperer" because I managed to keep him from fussing for a bit.

Should I get a couple inches cut off my hair?  I can’t decide.

His feet got cold so we wrapped him in a blanket. 

It was a fun night.  Little Ben got a little fussy later and cried for awhile.  We had a wonderful time hanging out with our friends, seeing the baby…and then we got to go home ;) 

Back in the beginning of April my sister Leslie and I performed a concert with the Presbyterian College Chamber Orchestra.  I never really told you guys about it, but I thought today would be a good day for it, because I think I’ve managed to get a bit of the recording online for you to listen to.  I apologize if it is clipped or doesn’t work 🙂

Bach Double 1st Movement

Bach Double 2nd Movement

Bach Double 3rd Movement

Encore: Prokofiev Sonata for Two Violins, 2nd Movement

Playing with orchestra is always a special thing, no matter what orchestra.  You get to stand up front and have all these people behind you backing you up.  It’s pretty awesome.  Also you get to dress up and wear a fancy gown, which is not something that one does ordinarily.

We got to our hometown of Clinton, South Carolina on Sunday afternoon.  We had a rehearsal with the orchestra on Monday afternoon, a masterclass for some of the students on Tuesday morning, another rehearsal on Tuesday afternoon, and the performance on Tuesday night.  Leslie and I hadn’t played together in awhile, but we had been playing the Bach Double together since we were children, and we chose an encore that we had performed in the last decade.  I was most nervous about that, but after we rehearsed together on Sunday night we knew it would be fine.  Sometimes all that practicing pays off!  The orchestra was a group of college students, obviously, and they were well prepared and very nice.  The director, Richard Thomas was easy to work with and had attended the same college I did so we were able to bond over that.  (Little known fact:  most musicians attended the college I went to 😉  )

Backstage for rehearsal!

Leslie, practicing her arm out pose, really in preparation for her wedding photos.

Warming up backstage in our dressing room.  We even had a couch and our own bathroom!  Just the one dressing room though 😉

Backstage after a successful performance—me, Richard Thomas (conductor), and Leslie

After the performance, with our very first violin teacher, Carol Roosevelt.  She was the person who originally taught us both the Bach Double Concerto.

Overall it was a lot of fun!  I hope to play with orchestra again soon.  I wish somebody had taken some pictures of us onstage with the orchestra, but I guess I didn’t ask anyone to do so!

Okay, I know you’ve all been missing my oatmeal reports. (Original posts here and here.)  I’m going to be brutally honest, readers.  While I’ve been eating my oatmeal like a good little girl every morning, I haven’t been photographing it as much.  That should change, as now I’m going to be out of oatmeal pictures and I’ll need more (MORE, MOOOOOORE) for this occasional feature.  I am going to get back into the habit of photographing my oatmeal, for YOU.  That’s how much you all mean to me.  *wipes tear from eyes*

Since I got a new phone (it’s an iPhone, you’re welcome, now I’m cooler than most people), I’ve been using my pink camera less, and I hadn’t actually uploaded pictures from it in a couple weeks.  I’d forgotten how many photos I had on it!  (And I need to use it more, because it’s better than my phone camera, I do believe.)

For instance, this gem of a conversation between my friend Sarah and I.  Since then she’s ALSO gotten an iPhone, and would you believe that means the conversation bubbles are now blue?  These are things that I’ve learned in the last few weeks…I am now part of the cool kids club and I couldn’t be happier about it.  Well, I couldn’t be happier about the fact that my phone actually WORKS properly now and doesn’t freeze up all the time.

But I digress.  So what have I been trying with my morning oatmeal?  Well, nothing new.  Except one day I took oatmeal TO GO because I met a friend for breakfast and didn’t get my oatmeal fix.  Also I needed to pack a lunch and didn’t have much on hand.  It worked.

Oatmeal in the car!  It was an AWESOME lunch.  The blackberries were ripe and plump, the oatmeal so…oaty.  I believe that’s some peanut butter, and I put the whole thing together with some protein powder and water.

You can tell this one is yogurt based.  I love the ones with yogurt best but I try to mix it up.

Yummy to that large amount of peanut butter.  And this is obviously steel ground oats.  They are growing on me.

I am drooling looking at that delicious blackberry juice…yummy!

Last but not least.  Or maybe least.  I hate to judge.

So, any suggestions, readers?  How can I make my oatmeal even better and take it to the next level?  I’ll confess that sometimes I add peanut butter, other times I add a touch of dark chocolate dreams, white chocolate wonderful, or cookie butter, none of which are QUITE as healthy, but I try not to do that every day, and I limit it to a little bit.  The blackberries have been on sale lately but I’d love to start eating more blueberries again…that would be a lovely change.

I’m also going to make a small confession.  The other night I was just too tired to put together my overnight oats.  TOO TIRED.  In fact this has happened more than once.  One time I made regular hot oatmeal (on the stove, I’ve mentioned the whole “no microwave” thing) and the other time I made “30 minutes oats” where I soaked the oats in water for about 30 minutes.  It didn’t taste quite as good as the “overnight” versus (had enough of the “quotations” yet?) but was absolutely edible.

Ugh.  I detest being sick.  It’s just a bad cold, nothing serious (why yes, I am a doctor) but it doesn’t feel good right now.  It’s made worse by the fact that the weather is awesome outside, really nice and warm, even hot.  Also by the fact that Saturday is the recital for my students at the school and I don’t want to cancel them, so I’ve been cancelling everything except the recital students, basically, and trying to soldier through.  Today is going to be very tough, but I think if I can drive there, I can teach.

One of the things I’ve been doing with my sick time, other than lying on the couch watching loads of television, is thinking about what I’m going to do when I get better.  I’m under the assumption that I’ll be better by the weekend so I’ve been making plans with friends to go out to dinner, go to concerts, go to spin classes, that sort of thing.  But then I started dreaming bigger—what about running the Chicago Rock and Roll Half Marathon on July 22?  I could combine it with a visit to Karen, or Chris had mentioned wanting to visit some friends in Chicago as well.  Then again, who runs a race in Chicago in July, it could be awful…but the race starts at 6:30 am so it’ll be cooler…but there’s a 6:30 in the am too??  This is all random thoughts from a woman who hasn’t run in over a week, can’t remember the last time.  But that will change as soon as I’m over this cold.  It would mean I’d have something to train for right away and get me out the door.  What do you think, Chris and Karen (Karen, another person I owe a phone call to…it’s hard to talk on the phone when you can’t breathe)?

Good news:  my shoulder is definitely feeling better.  I think it also helps being sick because I’m using it less AND because I have to sleep on my back for breathing purposes so I’m not sleeping on it as I had been.  It’s not 100 percent, no, but it has improved so much in the past few days.  I’m feeling really good about it.  I’m going to keep resting it and not do any practicing until I have to, and take at least another week off before trying anything, but I’m feeling much more optimistic about it.

We are also moving in July, and possibly visiting Boulder/Aspen, Colorado, so I don’t know how much we can fit in.  It will depend on where we are moving to (in town, not far, just something bigger, and we had a good lead but it might not work out after all so we need to keep looking) and when exactly. 

Yeah, super interesting I know.  Just some random sick day thoughts.  Like I said, I’d rather just stay on the couch all day but I’m heading out to teach a few kids to get them ready for the recital and then cutting out early to hit the couch again.  Not sure about tomorrow yet…I’m tempted to just cancel everything right now but it’s possible I’ll make a turn for the better by evening (please, please, please)…

Oh, and it’s been four months since our wedding.  Happy "four month anniversary" Chris :)  I looked on the internets and we have now beaten Renee Zellweger and Kenny Chesnee.

Right after we got married…I just noticed that Chris’s foot is more off the ground while walking than mine are RUNNING in most race photos!

Last month on the second Chris got annoyed when I mentioned it was our three month anniversary so I didn’t mention it in person today 😉