It's Getting Hot in Hurrr....

Oh, friends. These Clomid hot flashes are insane. They're not constant, but they're a few times an hour, sometimes a few times every half an hour. They come out of nowhere, and they're intense enough that they actually wake me up. So. I haven't been sleeping, which I'm sure is really adding to my already awesome mood swings. Honestly, those aren't as bad as I remember from past cycles, but I'll have to check in with E and see if that's an accurate assessment.

I'm also super over-the-top nauseous. The thought of eating is nauseating. It's not healthy, I know, but that, combined with only eating Low Amylose foods, combined with being on track with the Metformin has resulted in some weight loss. I'm down at least a couple of pounds just from last week, and in the past month I've lost 6.5 lbs. I'll take it- now I'm only 4.5 lbs away from my pre-Rosh Hashana weight. HOLLER.

How I felt on the scale today.

That's pretty much all for now.... I need to upload and edit the Thanksgiving photos still, but I'm going to save that for tomorrow. I mostly wanted to get this update recorded here before I forgot about these wicked awesome side effects. Wish us luck.

UPDATE:
I decided to add on to this post because I never intended for this blog to be a bunch of quick progress updates and I want to save my 20th post for something worthwhile. :)

Today is Tuesday and I'm still crazy nauseous. I tried making two or three different quick things for dinner tonight and I couldn't stomach more than a couple of bites of each. I'm not really sure what's going on, or why that would be. Additionally, I have a crazy bad headache- right by my forehead and temples.

Tomorrow is my first ultrasound since I took the Clomid, so seriously wish us luck. I'm also going to go there without having eaten because last week the NP had said she wanted to do a fasting glucose at some point. I should remember to bring a snack, but I also hope to get coffee with a friend who just moved somewhere right near my RE's office tomorrow after the appointment. Hurray! Socializing!

E won't be attending the appointment with me, I don't think, because he's working his third overnight in a row tonight AND he's in the middle of grad school finals so he a) hasn't slept in like 2 straight days, and b) has to finish a paper that's due tomorrow evening. And then we're going to a Chanukah party with another couple we know and love, at a new couple-friends' house. So it'll be a pretty exciting and fun but long day...

I'm getting nervous about tomorrow's appointment. I know I shouldn't expect much (I only finished the Clomid on Sunday) but I've been really good about the diet and pretty good about the Metformin (except! that I ran out of my old stash today and the new prescription STILL hasn't arrived yet... our insurance or pharmacy won't let us get it through our normal pharmacy because it's usually something people are on fo' lyfe so they do it through mail-order. I have to look into that tomorrow. I was really banking on it getting here just in time today...). So that's that. I'm going to drink some tea and try to chillax, and maybe try to eat something, before I head to bed for a bit before my appointment. Ahhhh.

I'm in a Glass Case of Emotion!

AKA Happy Thanksgiving(!!!), AKA I started a Clomid cycle. And yes, this is truly how I feel:

I'm gonna go ahead and throw in a Jump Break here, because this post got over-the-top long-winded. So if you're interested in reading my return-to-the-RE drama, read on, and if you're just here for the crafts, you can skip this one. :)


Yep. It had been over a year, but we finally made it back to our Reproductive Endocrinologist this month. The whole getting-back-into-the-swing-of-things process has been a lot of hurry up and wait.

First, I needed my annual exam from our OB-Gyn, because the RE won't start anything until the results come back A-Ok there. A week later we were in the clear so we called to make an appointment with the RE (to discuss a game plan) but they didn't have any appointments until the following week. So there's another week. At that appointment, the RE was super excited that I'd lost weight (I'm currently down about 10lbs... I had lost about 18lbs but gained 8 or 9 back over Tishrei and I haven't been able to lose it since. I did run out of Metformin, and/or was taking it sporadically there, so I have a hunch that the Metformin is what's doing the trick, unfortunately), but because I'd lost weight he was hesitant to move on to the injectables like we had discussed doing before we took our break (partially because I was nervous about moving on to the injectables). In short, he was afraid that the injectables would work TOO well and we'd end up with more follicles than we could manage, and would have to scrap the cycle. Cool.

In the end, we're trying 200mg of Clomid again. It's kind of nice to be back in familiar territory. And walking into the office for that meeting was awesome because all of the secretaries and nurses, etc. were SUPER excited to see us. There were a lot of hugs, smiles and a bunch of playful accusations that we'd left them for another doctor. They also did blood work for both of us that Thursday, saying it should be back late the next week.

Welp, it didn't come back for 12. Freaking. Days. I think I was freaking out so much because I was scared I'd have another case of cold feet and we wouldn't end up back there for ANOTHER year. Or that my period would inconveniently (yet miraculously) come while we were waiting and then we'd have to wait even longer because the RE wouldn't write the prescription for Clomid until the blood work was back, and therefore we'd miss this month's cycle.

When it finally did come back Tuesday afternoon, they wanted me to come in the next morning. But I work on Wednesday mornings from 6:30am-9am, and the blood work hours are 6:30am-8am. #winning. Normally, that'd be fine- I don't work Thursday mornings, so I could go the next day. EXCEPT that the Thursday in question was Thanksgiving, so the Brooklyn office was closed, and they suggested I head there the next Monday. #winning

Basically, like a crazy person, I moved heaven and earth to find coverage for my shift and was able to make it to the Wednesday appointment. You don't even want to know how many favors I owe said coworker. It was actually only my 2nd time ever going by myself, without E. True story. While I was there the NP informed me that my thyroid levels were slightly elevated, so she wrote me a prescription for Synthroid. It was a 2.9, which is on the high end of normal, so she said if we weren't trying to get pregnant they'd never put me on meds for it, but pregnancy can elevate the levels so they want to prepare for that. Actually, they checked it twice- once in their office and once at the lab they sent the blood work out to, and at their own office it came out as 2.1. So it's really just a precaution.

Ha. So much for cutting it short. The point is, now I'm on Synthroid, a prenatal vitamin plus Vitamin D, metformin 3x/day, and Clomid. And now I'm ALREADY (on day TWO) an emotional basket case and sobbed like a baby (ironic) this Thanksgiving. Which I really felt was legitimate at the time, but now a few hours later and the suggestion of my husband, I'm pretty convinced that it was the Clomid.
I think that's enough for now, I'll post more about our attempt at a Low Amylose Thanksgiving meal ASAP.

Have I ever mentioned that Alanis Morissette forever warped the concept of irony for me? Jagged Little Pill was my 2nd CD, ever. 5th grade. I was young and impressionable. I love her, but I think my entire most of a lot of people my age have this problem. You should totally watch this if you have the same issue. It'll clear some things up. #firstworldproblems

Jim Morrison Might Be Proud...

Still here! Haven't forgotten about this. I have a bunch of photos of projects from the past month or so that I just need to sort through and write about. And, I guess, the biggest news is that we started seeing our RE again after a year+ long break. I'll save that post for another day (/month? haha) and keep this one limited to The Doors. Or, really, the door. Our front door. I don't know if I ever posted this "before" pic (from my Instagram, haha), but this is what our hallway looked like....

I have no idea why our front door is open a crack here...

Don't get me wrong, I love this shot. That's our "Family Tree" frame wall over there. And our West Elm runner that I'm thankfully still madly in love with. Note that this was before we I painted the off-white molding white. Such a good move, btw. But we had this leftover quart of paint (Benjamin Moore's Dolphin at 75% strength- I know, it's shocking that an attempt at a custom color didn't work out... ::sarcasm::) that I'd bought while trying to find the right gray for our living room (more on that here) and it was burning a hole in my... storage closet? Long story short, I decided to paint the back of our front door. So I tested it out on the peep hole (I always feel super dirty saying that- is there another word for it??) and it stayed like that for, oh I don't know, 3 weeks? Thankfully, my husband never even noticed it or he would've realized I was up to something and tried to stop me. ;) Here's that look (let's ignore the fact that I still haven't painted that off-white trim a the top of the door):

Yep, those are shelves from a discarded book shelf still waiting to be brought down to the garbage area. 

The other day, a friend texted me a photo of her newly-painted black door, and that lit the fire under my tush. When E ran out to do a couple of errands, I whipped out the paint and a brush and went for  it. Here it is after one coat (yikes):

I was about 1/2 done with the second coat when I heard E coming up the stairs... womp womp. I  opened the door for him (chivalry ain't dead) and told him to come in very carefully. He was surprisingly a bit wary of this project, pre-completion. But once that second coat got up there and everything had dried, voila:

I'm a little obsessed. I started referring to it as "Industrial Chic" bc it kind of looks like a metal door. Which is slightly ghetto but in a cool way (just go with it). I kind of want to marry it. And just for kicks, here's a new version of that Instagram pic:

A few other discrepancies between the new and old views aside from the new door color: the entryway table and art.

I smile at the door practically every time I walk by, even from way back here. It's actually a little worrisome. I was thinking about painting all of the doors this color but I think I'm going to hold off on that now and just let this be the star of the show. Hope you like it as much as we do (because EE is sold on it now too!).

As American as Gluten-Free, Low-Amylose Apple... "Pie"

Ok guys, its a LONG list of ingredients, but it's mostly all the same stuff repeated for the 3 parts. We had a bunch of college students and Rabbis visiting us all weekend for the Chabad on Campus Shabbaton  here in Crown Heights, so (selfishly) I decided to make a treat that I could also enjoy. Lemme know if you have trouble with it or suggestions. I tweaked and the combined three different recipes to make this one, so I'm sure there's more than ample room for improvement... but our guests gobbled this thing up in less than a day. Here ya go....

INGREDIENTS
Crust:
-1/4 cup almond flour
-1/2 cup + 2 TBS coconut flour
- 1/4 tsp sea salt
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- dash of ground nutmeg
- dash of ground ginger
- 1/4 cup coconut oil, melted
- 1/4 cup honey
- 1 egg
- 1 tsp vanilla

Filling:
- 1 cup water
- 1 TBS lemon juice
- 1 cup coconut sugar
- 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
- 1/4 tsp ground clove
- 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
- dash of salt
- 1/4 tsp vanilla
- 3 large apples; cored, peeled and chopped (I used Cortland, because that's what we had in the house)
- 1/4 cup almond flour

Crumble topping:
- 3/4 cup coconut sugar
- 3/4 cup almond OR coconut flour
- 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
- dash of ground cinnamon
- dash of ground ginger
- 1/3 cup Earth Balance, chilled & cut into little pieces

DIRECTIONS
Crust:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees
- Mix crust's dry ingredients
- In a separate bowl, mix crust's wet ingredients
- Combine the two bowls' mixtures
- Wait a couple of minutes to make sure moisture is really absorbed
- Press evenly into the bottom & along the sides of a pie pan
- Gently stab with a fork all over the bottom (don't go TOO crazy)
- Bake for 5-7 mins; make the filling during this time

There's no olive oil in this recipe. That guy's just photo bombing.

Filling:
- Combine the ingredients. Yep, it's that simple.
- Throw it into the partially-baked crust (I added the crumble later in the baking process)
- Bake for about 20 minutes. (I checked it a couple of times to make sure the crust wasn't burning, but you could also put tin foil on the crust.)

With unbaked Crumble Topping

Crumble Topping:
- Mix everything but the Earth Balance together
- Cut in the Earth Balance until combined
- Using your fingers, crumble/break off small chunks and sprinkle on top of the pie.
- Bake an additional 10-20 minutes.

It'll look pretty liquid-y, but it solidifies as it cools.
Hope you enjoy!

Off-the-Wall with Off-White

I'm going to start this off by confessing that we've I've painted parts of our hallway walls at least 5 different colors. It's totally embarrassing. It started with Shakespeare Tan 228 by Benjamin Moore. I thought it'd be a nice beige, but as soon as I got the first bit of paint on the wall I realized that (at least in our sunless hallway) it was way too green. It was like a puke greenish tan. It was terrible. It was my first of many paint-oopsies, and for a few minutes I was too proud to admit it was disgusting, but by the second small wall I knew we couldn't keep it. I actually just recently gave that gallon away on Craigslist. Next we moved on to Smokey Taupe 983, also by our good friend Benny. At the time, my thoughts were that it wasn't "enough of a color". Or maybe it was too cold. I'm not sure, but it didn't make it on to many walls before I gave up on it too. After that, we moved in a new direction-

-no, not those New Directions... but let's take a moment to say RIP to Corey Monteith/Finn. Judging by my fb feed, last night's tribute episode was a tear jerker.

I decided to go blue. Labrador Blue 1670 or CC-740 (I think they're they same but who knows). I loved the color anyway, but then I found out it was the color used in the Dunphy home on Modern Family. Whattup. There was no going back. We actually finished the whole hallway this time. Buuuut it was super bold and dark- not at all like the pale blue it is on the show.... Sad face.

It was around that time that Hubbs and I went on vacation to Acapulco (that's a story for another time) and fell in love with the calm blue-greens that we saw everywhere. We came back and I was on a mission to find the right one. Long story short, it was the precursor to my 50 Shades of Gray shenanigans, and we painted about 100 blue/green/aqua sample in the hallway before choosing Olympic's Sea Sprite C61-2. And then we realized that our hallway has totally different lighting in different parts of it (there's some turns and parts of it get a trickle of light from the windows in the kitchen and living room, while other chunks are tunnel-like and others just get no sunlight whatsoever), so colors look COMPLETELY DIFFERENT in each section. So while Sea Sprite had been perfect over by the living room, our entryway was super duper green.  Ruh Roh!

Here's a photo where you can see the original off-white, the current color (Bird's Egg by BM), and at least two other colors (the greenish sea sprite and darker labrador blue)... what a hot mess:

Which brings us to the point of this post, because that pic also shows what I did last night. All of the trim and everything from the chair rail down plus most of the ceilings in our apartment are off white. All of the walls were off-white too until I painted them 28x each. Off-white is far from terrible. It's not bad at all. It's just boring and kind of makes everything look dirty. NBD, really. But this is me we're talking about. The painting nut. So over the course of about 4-5 hours, I painted it all most of it white. Behr's Ultra Pure White (off the shelf) in semi-gloss, which I'd bought about 2 months ago (and then couldn't find for awhile).

To cut to the point, here are some before, during, and afters...just try to ignore the dustballs and our sad-looking hardwood floors, mmmkay?:

To the right of our front door (when coming into the apartment).

The right-hand turn once you're inside, leading to the breakfast nook (that's our pantry door) and kitchen. This is where I began painting.

The same spot, just painted white. Obviously the next step is to finally cut-in with the blue paint. A step I clearly never got around to. For the past year.

Before and after of the hallway connecting our bedroom, the bathroom, the living room, and the guest room... I'd previously painted the border, but not the inner part, below the chair rail:

This is looking toward our front door; there's usually a West Elm runner here (see the photo below). The left side is partially painted, the right side is done.

My favorite shot. :)

And there we have it. I only had a quart of paint, so I'd like to get another and do a second coat in some places. And paint the baseboard in the breakfast nook. And kitchen And do below the chair rail in the living room. Uhhh yeah we'll see if it takes me another year before any of that happens....

Leo and Kate Approved Chickpea Flatbread

I was going to reuse the blogpost title "Chick-chick-chick It Out" for this, but decided it was too soon. We're only 14 posts in. No, this isn't about chicken. It's about chickpeas. Well, Chickpea flour. Err... garbanzo bean flour. 

You know I've tried almond flour, coconut flour, and now it was time for garbanzo bean flour. There might've been more experimentation too... but that's what comes to mind so far. Chickpea flour is pretty awesome in that it can be used to make... wait for it... Chickpea Flatbread or Pitas. Seriously. Check it out on Pinterest, there's a million (exaggerate much?) pins about "Authentic Italian/Persian/Indian etc Flatbread/Pita/Taco/etc" and there's about 100 different names for them. Trust me, I checked it out. I used this recipe (look there for more detailed instructions! and more gorgeous photos!), but I'll be buying more flour and trying out a few more. 

These are awesome. And there are only 4 ingredients:

- 2.5c Chickpea flour or Garbanzo Bean flour or Gram (all the same thing, AFAIK)

- 3.5c cold water

- 1/4c extra virgin olive oil 

- salt/pepper to taste 

Alright so maybe that's 5 ingredients, but who's counting?

The only bummer is that once you mix the ingredients together (I mixed them all together, but just realized while I was re-reading that original blog post that the oil is supposed to be used later, whoops), you have to let it sit for 3 freaking hours (yep, the length of Titanic) on the counter. I was wary so I covered it with plastic wrap but maybe you don't have to. [Update: Good news, folks! I added in the oil when I did it because I actually followed this recipe with much more concise instructions, not the one I previously linked to! We're trying the same recipe over again right now with that first link's oil trick. I'll let you know if it's any different.]

You should know that since 1997, I've used "How many times you can watch Titanic" as an estimate of how long anything 3 hours or longer will take. I'm totally serious. I don't always say it out loud, but I definitely think it. Especially at work: "Only 3 more Titanic viewings till I can go home!"

pre-salt & pepper

Pre-Titanic

So after you watch Titanic (I guess you could watch 3-4 episodes of Breaking Bad instead... or, like, actually do something productive...), you turn on the oven to 350*, skim off any foam that formed on the surface (yeah, I know), pour the oil into a large, rimmed cookie sheet (which I clearly did not do), and then pour the batter in so it's about 1/4" thick. Then you bake it for about 30 minutes or until golden brown (mine took quite a bit longer but that might be because of my oil mishap). And BAM. Just cut it and serve it up.  

I ate mine with hummus, because pita made of chickpeas just wasn't enough chickpeas. Duh.

I put the rest in Tupperware and it got kind of hard, but maybe if you heat it up it'd get softer? Who knows.... clearly not I. Winning major credibility points here.

(UPDATE #2: The second batch came out crispier along the edges, which were especially yummy. I've already eaten about half of the batch. I'm not sure if adding the olive oil vs. putting it in the pan first made any noticeable difference, but if you happen to experiment with the two methods, lemme know if you liked it better one way or the other...)

My Fitness Lifesaver

You guys. This was maybe my favorite (Jewish month of) Tishrei ever, fun-wise (only competes with Tishrei 2005, really). I got to see tons of old friends, made some new friends, stayed up late with all of the festivities in our neighborhood, and Hubbs was on vacation for all of Sukkos. #winning.

But diet-wise, it was horrendous. I gained 9+lbs in like 3 weeks. Seriously. I really tried to limit my challah intake over Rosh Hashana, but we were eating at friends' houses for all of the festive meals so "being careful" quickly became a lost cause. If I'd really wanted to, I could have made my own food, but c'mon. If you know me at all, you know I have the worst case of FOMO (fear of missing out) ever so I'd just be crying all month that I didn't get to taste so-and-so's chicken pot pie.... or whatever. Those Sukkos cupcakes that we never ended up sharing with anyone weren't going to eat themselves.

So, I cheated. And I cheated. And then I cheated some more. It got more and more out of hand, and by the week of Sukkos I was eating insane ice cream Sundaes and all the rugelach I could get my hands on. My skin broke out, my stomach was having all kinds of issues, and I actually felt gross.

When we got home from visiting friends on Sunday, I stepped on the scale and almost cried when it was more than 9lbs higher than it had been before Tishrei. And I'm human, so I started beating myself up over it a little a lot... But the good(?) news is that even the Husband was feeling disgusting after this month of binge eating, so we made a pact to do a 3 or 4 day juice-and-chicken-soup fast starting Monday morning. And here we are, Wednesday afternoon, still going strong. I'll write more about juicing later. Here's an old instagram pic of our juicer, just for kicks. We aren't using root veggies or anything else not low-amylose approved this week, so ignore the carrots.

My main intention for this post was to say that for me, MyFitnessPal has been a real lifesaver. I got on the scale this morning and saw that I was just shy of 6lbs lighter than I was Sunday morning. And somehow still felt bad about myself. Which is totally unhealthy and I should definitely be in therapy. Anyway, when I went to log it in, my phone's battery was dead and I had to do it on the actual website on the actual computer. I know. The horror. But then! This graphic popped up and it put so much into perspective and really made me see how much this low-amylose diet is really doing for me. Check it out:

That's a graph of my weight fluctuations in the past year, October 2012-October 2013. As you can see, I really started trying to lost weight (again) about a year ago, without much luck. You should know that from October 2012-April 2013 I was literally eating at most 1200 calories a day (except for those very clear binge days). It was so not healthy, and I was miserable, but I didn't know what else to do. April 2013 is when I started Low-Amylose, and while it hasn't exactly been smooth sailing, there's a difference of more than 20 lbs between the highest and lowest points on this graph, and we're less than 4 lbs away from a new lowest point. BOO-YAH!

Moral of the story? Being OCD and charting my weight-loss story finally came in handy and inspirational. And that's what's up.